Quote Originally Posted by frenchmon View Post
Well Thank you sir....the sound is amazing...even with the Red. Much louder than the 2.1 And the pops and scratches I heard previously with the 2.1 are gone.

I had no idea the Cedar Walton was moaning during his piano solo on Dextor Gordons Album Gothan City until I played it on the 7.1[ Im wondering if I really should get another phono amp? Dont get me wrong....the one in the Rotel is sounding really good, but I have nothing to compare it to, so I really dont know the level of performance I have. What do you think?
Congrats!! And welcome to high end analog...you have arrived my friend.

The 2M Black will floor you. I promise that you will only be thinking about your table for at least a couple of months.

As for your Rotel, I like the specs. I can tell you that my Bozak 919 has an amazing phono section. It's both incredible in sound and in design. I would say that it matches my Creek.

The easy and obvious advice is to audition something. I would assume that your Rotel can handle itself up to the 500 mark. Maybe not. It took my modded EICO to undo both my Creek and Bozak. My tech redesigned the old circuitry so that my signal is using BOTH pairs of tubes, much like most standard tubed stages at the $1K mark. He also added an extremely accurate RIAA curve.

The Black is an incredible cart and can indeed be held back by an underachieving stage. For now just sit back and enjoy what you have, worry about it in a few months.