Rotel Michi Q5 CD Player

Listening

We installed the Rotel Michi Q5 CD player in our best system by playing it with Soulution 511/525 amplification and Vivid Audio Kaya 90 speakers. Obviously, the following considerations are related to listening to the machine in “full” operation, that is, as a CD player taking advantage of the internal conversion unit. Before moving on to the listening notes, I would like to take the time to mention the only two negative notes I found. The first is the relative discretion with which the Michi Q5 decides to show or not show metadata on the display. This is indeed curious, but I should note that with some CDs in a few moments the tracks with their titles and disc cover were presented on the TFT display, while with others they were not. I do not think that this is attributable to a lack of completeness of the database that is consulted by the machine because, in fact, even rather rare CDs were recognized, while other very well-known ones did not have the same fate. Let us say, however, that this is not a big problem, at least for me. Much more penalizing is the failure to support the SACD(Super Audio CD) format, which has prevented me from listening to some discs that I love very much. This, I must say, is a bit of a shame because it prevents some enthusiasts–including yours truly–with several titles in SACD format from considering buying this Michi Q5 as the “ultimate player,” a title to which they might otherwise certainly aspire.

Now to the actual listening. Years and years of music on file had made me forget how good the classic CD in Red Book format was, when fed to a player worthy of the name. The first thing that strikes you about this Rotel Michi Q5 CD player is the breadth of the sound front. It almost seems to want to go hand in hand with the player’s imposing physical dimensions. The stage unfolds coherently on all three axes, projecting far beyond the speakers and even the physical limits of the listening room. Another aspect that does not go unnoticed is the granitic solidity of the bass range. Deep, stentorian when needed, fast and very well articulated. It makes quite an impression to hear after so many years some CDs, which I did not think were particularly good, sound so spectacular. Poor things! Probably the blame for the poor performance was not on them but on the player I employed at the time. Within the picture just described there is also room for delicacy: the midrange of the Rotel Michi Q5 is particularly rich, natural, harmonically detailed. In short, I would call it “rich in content and expressiveness,” something one immediately realizes when listening to the large symphony orchestra where it is easy to follow the alternation of the groups of instruments precisely by following their harmonic traces. I therefore applaud the conversion section and the output stages of this player which have been able to authoritatively drive a demanding preamp like the Soulution 525, thus managing to make the most of its extraordinary sonic gifts.