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

Robbob: Your world is a dedicated, acoustically tuned theater....and it's easy to say that you don't believe in or use room equalization. I would love to have that luxury as would most buyers of processors and amplifiers....but that's not our real world. we have real rooms, we have spouses opinions, we have large picture windows, etc. In an untuned environment, I will take a mid-fi Denon over an Emotiva UMC-1 every time...and yes, I had a UMC-1 for many months. I have heard an audyssey tuned room vs EMOQ because I have an Audyssey Sound Equalizer and I could compare the two....there was no comparison in my lousy to average acoustically family room. I now have a denon 4311 on order with Audyssey xt32 which will allow me to equalize multiple subs as well....and I'll sell the sound equalizer since it's no longer needed with Audyssey XT32.

Yes, the UMC-1 sounded quite good when it worked....I sent it back when the return period ended and Emotiva still had a number of outstanding problems that were driving my wife and I nuts. Perhaps they fixed them since then, but I wasn't going to take a risk of wasting my money on a buggy processor. But keep in mind that I was using it with the Audyssey Sound Equalizer...and I doubt that any UMC-1 user is going to buy a sound equalizer and pro install kit for $3000 to make their $699 processor sound good in THEIR real room.

I believe that an Onkyo, Integra, Denon,.... box with Audyssey multEq and certainly one with the more powerful Audyssey Multeq XT will sound much better in the average room than a UMC-1 using or not using Emoq.

Just for completeness, all my tests were done with an NHT Power 5 amp, James sub and NHT speakers all around (2.9's, ac2,L5's)

"It's no fun to consider that a 7000 dollar product sounds no better or inferior to a 1000 dollar product. But it happens all the time in audio."

Could you give us some examples?

Yes Lexicon rebadged ther new Oppo, thats old news but I talked about the MC8 that was made years ago and by most accounts was a superb product in its day....try to stay on topic.
I noted the Emotiva was good for the money..........what more do you want? Dont be so insecure.

GHstudio,

You're correct as I do have a dedicated theater room that has been rebuilt to achieve good sonics. But I've had this debate before and I maintain that I can easily do better tuning a system in ANY room than the various systems out there. So can most of my audiophile friends.
For that reason the automated tuning feature, while nifty, was of no interest to me with ANY of the processors I tried. I evaluated them based on sonics.

If someone lacks the skills to tune a system, then I agree 100% to go with a Denon or Onkyo. But using their auto tune feature utterly failed for me and I could always improve on those settings with ease.

All of that aside, the UMC-1 has a superior pre-amp section and the issues have been resolved. Again, I have a system that represents a big investment in money and time. If the UMC-1 was never debugged and sonically poor I'd toss it on the trash.

Rob

Hi James

To name expensive products that fall short of less expensive ones is not hard to do. I recently posted a shootout between CD players costing over 3K vs. a Oppo player that cost 300 dollars.
In the world of speakers I've heard models costing over 10K that I didn't find worth 10 dollars, but to name them would be trolling.
You can't "buy" the best systems. They have to be assembled with years of listening experience and an ear for synergy.

Rob