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The Rotel DX-3 is Rotel’s first offering of a fully balanced, class-A headphone amplifier. Precision built and feature-rich, it offers substantial power in a very small footprint.

Rotel DX-3 Headphone DAC/Amplifier/Preamp

The Headphone DAC/Amplifier marketplace is crowded with a flood of contenders, all offering a special sauce of power and features. But one name, Rotel, has quietly stepped in with the DX-3, a fully balanced headphone DAC/Amp/Preamp. Rotel, the 64-year-old Japanese manufacturer of audio products has brought its considerable experience building custom toroidal transformers to the headphone world.

The DX-3 is a headphone amp with a heavy-duty, solid, all-aluminum body. Built with Rotel’s custom in-house manufactured, ultra-low distortion, shielded toroidal transformer, the DX-3 offers high current drivers and high-quality capacitors. It is equipped with aptX HD and ACC wireless Bluetooth, and an ESS Sabre ES9028PRO DAC (32-bit/768k Hz) DAC. Accessing the controls can be accomplished by either the full-color graphic display, or the well-featured extruded aluminum remote control.

Rotel DX-3 Headphone DAC/Amplifier/Preamp Specifications
Design:

Class A, fully balanced DAC/Headphone Amplifier

DAC Chipset:

ESS Sabre ES9028PRO

Recommended Headphone Impedance:

16-Ohm to 300-Ohm

Dimensions:

8.5” x 2.75” x 9.75”

Weight:

7.1 lbs.

MSRP:

$1699.00

Website:

https://www.rotel.com/product/dx-3

Company:

Rotel

My first listen to the DX-3 gave me goosebumps. I think all the headphone amps that I’ve listened to are noise-free, but the DX-3 is on a different level. The background silence behind the music is velvety black. Music seems to be richer in contrast.

Our editor-in-chief, Carlo Lo Raso has written about Rotel’s Michi X5 Series 2 Integrated Amplifier, which highlights just how special Rotel’s various lines of amplifiers are.

Watch for my complete review of the Rotel DX-3 which will be coming soon in Secrets.

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I was born to love audio. My grandfather was awarded a patent for a “METHOD OF PRODUCING TALKING-MACHINE RECORDS” in 1912. He also sang opera. He passed his passion for music and the early days of recording on to my mother, who then passed it on to my sisters and me. My father, a professor of electrical engineering, was also an amateur jazz guitarist. He loved Heathkit’s home-built electronics, and as a little girl I was his “assistant builder”. He always talked to me about what he was building, and we always had the biggest T.V. and the most advanced HiFi gear. Music was always on in our house, and my folks really listened to and discussed what was playing on the turntable, and later the reel-to-reel deck. I grew up with jazz, the classics, and my father’s goofy and extensive collection of comedy albums and sound effects records. He always made sure I had the latest transistor radios, which were my prized possessions; I could be found late at night, trying to listen in on the faraway stations that magically appeared through the static between my local stations. In the early 70s, I discovered the remarkable world of Japanese audio on my layovers in Japan as a flight attendant. I remember lugging home a huge, very heavy wood-clad Kenwood receiver back from Japan, thanks to a kind captain that made space for my treasure in the cockpit. That receiver powered my two Bose 901s that I had hung from the ceiling in the living room. I also fell in love with the early Sennheiser open-back headphones that had come on the scene in 1968 and which sparked my passion for headphones that continues to this day. After traveling the world as a flight attendant my work led me to the restaurant world of the San Francisco Bay Area, where I spent several years working in a “farm to table” restaurant. I developed a passion for photography while co- writing a cookbook with the chef. My skills as a food and garden photographer grew and I added working as a photojournalist with assignments that usually included the food scene in the Bay Area. A year ago, I joined the San Francisco Audiophile Foundation (https://audiophilefoundation.org), where I discovered my tribe. It was humbling to find out that compared to almost everyone I met, I actually have a long way to go to call myself an audiophile! I was also shocked to find out that out of over 300 members, there were only three women (including me). It was a source of pride, however, to know that the president and a founding member is a woman. Yay, team! You can find me outdoors hiking and photographing landscapes and wildlife and trying my hand at nighttime landscape photography.

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