What's the latest word on the Emotiva UMC-1?

"Emotiva is still working through the issues with the UMC-1. Per their forum they are up to firmware version W7.02.00.00." (jedinight24)

Come on! You gotta laugh at that one, right?. I mean we're talking about a piece of gear that has been worked on now for litterally YEEEEEEEARS! - a product that is now outdated in respect to the latest feature sets currently available.
By the time they possibly ever do get the buggs worked out, The UMC-1 will surely be an obsolete product, yes?
The UMC-1 has to be the best running joke in the history of the industry, by my recollection! There's got to be a place in the consumer electronics annals, for all to ponder, when all is said and done on this turkey, Ya think?
Well, it's a story anyhowz.
I for one am happy with my pretty descent HK AVR354 as a preamp to an outboard amp pressently. And, actually, it sounds pretty darn sweet as a stand alone unit to, running my little Klipsch quintet III system, connected up with my "Anti-cable" wires...really!! Supper clear and musical with nice dynamics and smooth balance, and excellent deail too.
Hey, who needs mondo expensive gear when you can have audiophile mid-fi gear on the cheap?!
I Call it my "AV reference recession package!"
I did, you know, give up on my emotva afterall. Heck, they didn't even ever email/call me that my piece was ready, after being on the list for all this time, either!!

I agree Emotiva bit the dust big time......even with all the Gorilla net marketing, you cant hide a bad product from being discovered.

Okay...how about a comment from someone with a dedicated home theater who actually owns the UMC-1?

It seems like plenty of people are forum junkies with no actual experience with the product.

The REAL story is that the UMC-1 is a FANTASTIC item that does a great job. And the real story is also that Emotiva released it FAR too soon and it was seriously in need of debugging. 6 months or so of debugging and this thread wouldn't exist.

I use mine with two BD sources and HDTV via cable. Operation is now perfect after the most recent upgrades. I previously had the Outlaw and this unit's pre-amp sounds better than that one, which I felt was on par with the Marantz.

The UMC-1 has allowed me to match the EQ of the speakers almost perfectly. There is a full 10 band EQ for each channel, so a center channel along with sides and rears can be set correctly. EmoQ works fine, but I see this type of EQ as a starting point only. The only operational flaw now? When you advance to a chapter the audio takes about a 1/2 second to engage. And that's it. I think I can trade that little issue against is easy operation and excellent preamp section!

The people who complain are always the loudest. Then there are people who love to bash a product based on that, even if they've never tried it. The UMC-1 is now ready for prime time and an incredible bargain. I think it's a better product that the 2.5 times more expensive Onkyo unit, which has inferior audio and has it's own issues.

The main thing we can all hope for is that Emotiva learned not to do this again. They HAD to know about many of these issues, but still released the product. That WAS a bad idea, and a sad error for what eventually became a great processor.

The theater!
http://GhostLight.zenfolio.com/p280561067/slideshow

Cheers,

Rob

Thx Robbob! Ok, I'll buy one. Dunno what I was thinking...

Queefee, I don't know what you were thinking either.

I own a UMC-1 and it's working flawlessly in my system. It cost 1200 bucks less than my friends Onkyo processor, and it sounds better. In fact I tried it as a preamp with the Odyssey amp and Merlin speakers with surprisingly good results. No, it's not better than my tube based Stingray, but it's sound is clearly superior to some fairly expensive processors, including the Marantz for 2200 bucks.

I don't doubt some people will have troubles. Every processor does. Emotiva released FAR too early; I think we can agree on that.

But this is a great processor that competes with anything else I've seen/tried. The new firmware seems to have gotten things corrected for most users.

Rob