Rotel integrated stereo Amplifier RA 810A

[Gary Hogg]

Im considering a Rotel Amp RA 810A at $150 I'm wondering if this is a good price and if the amp is of good quality. Also if someone can suggest a matching Turntable budget around $200. I have Kenwood speakers 8ohms from about 1997/8 which still look good apart from a bit of dust. New Audiophile enthusiast. Suggestions for amps also appreciated.

 

[TLS Guy]

Im considering a Rotel Amp RA 810A at $150 I'm wondering if this is a good price and if the amp is of good quality. Also if someone can suggest a matching Turntable budget around $200. I have Kenwood speakers 8ohms from about 1997/8 which still look good apart from a bit of dust. New Audiophile enthusiast. Suggestions for amps also appreciated.

That is a classic British integrated amp, and low powered.

My brother in law has one of those. It is a fine simple amp, only 20 watts per channel.

UK rooms are generally much smaller than US ones, so you can get away with it.

Your big problem is Kenwood speakers. Your best improvement would be to upgrade those. However therein lies the problem, modern speakers tend to present more difficult complex loads than speakers of your vintage. So this amp might not be the best going forward. In addition most people are starting to want to integrate sound and picture. Even if not a lot of today's equipment only have HDMI outputs, and older equipment does not allow for that.

The other issue is that you can only add a sub to an amp like that using speaker level inputs, which few subs have these days.

I think you want to think through what sort of system you want going into the years ahead.

If you want to stay vintage fine. If you want to avail yourself of the vast increase in functionality of modern gear then you need a reset.

You can use older gear in the modern world, but it takes some ingenuity.

I wrote up this post on this very subject.

 

[MrBoat]

I found that it was a lot less problematic to just keep with the proprietary rack components that often came with the speakers. I know it's not audiophile trendy to not have pedigreed amplifiers in the rack, but it will typically deliver all that the speakers of the same name can, and better than what they are typically given credit for.

The best part of that whole scenario is, that the old amps that came with those speakers, can be had for pennies on the dollar and with a little bit of servicing, can deliver another 10 years or more of trouble free use.

The only caution to this idea being, that once you find one, you often find 2 or 3 more for little or no money and you end up with a collection of sorts.

 

[lovinthehd]

That amp is a bit old, almost 30 years per this https://www.hifiengine.com/manual_library/rotel/ra-810a.shtml could be a concern with aging components or possible abuse. I'd look for something with a bit more power, but your speakers' sensitivity and your spl needs will really dictate how much you would find sufficient.

Is this only for use with analog sources?

$200 is on the skinny side for anything new in the way of a turntable/cartridge combo these days, are you also trying to find something on the used market in this case? Might include your location if going used....
If new maybe look at Audio Technica package deals for turntable/cartridge, maybe Pro-Ject has something along those lines, haven't looked for a while....