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

Well...I have directly compared the Emotiva XPA-3 & XPA-2 to some fairly good SS amps. You can do an search and see my comparison between the Emotiva XPA-3 and Rotel 1090, Odyssey Stratos and so on.
I have always wondered how people judged amps as anything without hearing them through several pre-amps.

Other insane items from Emotiva are their CD player which I also recently compared to the Rega Saturn (and others) and their USP-1 preamp, which lost in it's shootout with a Rogue Metis tube pre-amp, but not by much.

Obviously much of this is subjective. What sounds cold to you may sound detailed and accurate to someone else. I don't use the Emotiva gear for music much, but for home theater it's as good as anything I've tried. As I said, I've abandoned SS completely for amp/preamp on music.

Rob

"Other insane items from Emotiva are their CD player which I also recently compared to the Rega Saturn (and others) and their USP-1 preamp, which lost in it's shootout with a Rogue Metis tube pre-amp, but not by much."

It seems many things associated with emo are thought of as insane. I have heard the sauce used at emu-fest also described as insane by "wide ranging" Dan. So insane isn't all it is cracked up to be.

Well, James....in this case insane refers to the fact that Emotiva has several items on the market that are priced at a 3rd of what they should be.

The vast majority of those who bash companies like Emotiva, Outlaw and several other direct-to-buyer outfits, reject them with little to no real experience.

Years ago I owned a fairly good Parasound amp. My friend went out an bought an Outlaw amp for 40% less. Though I knew the paper specs were impressive I had faith that my Parasound would be better than the "bargain." It was poor logic as Outlaw's business model was to match or best amps like mine for less by not supporting ads and a dealer network. Of course these days Outlaw gets a good deal of respect. Emotiva is in that same camp, slowly gaining ground and is slowly pushing the boundaries of what some call "mid-fi." For home theater it's not just a good value, it's an insane one!

Rob

3 times? Now your just blindly blowing smoke up everyones ass, Emotiva makes a product for X amount and knows it is worth Y and they price it accordingly. To act as if Emotiva is some sort of charitable outfit concerned first with giving away product and profit second is just proof you know nothing about business.
Emotiva is surviving and maybe even thriving because it understands the value of its product pure and simple. There are 2 ways to go out of business, charge too much or charge too little......its obvious they are priced correctly. Its obvious your a fan and thats great but lets not get crazy here.

Just out of curiosity, Rob when you say that you and your audiophile friends can "tune" better than a well-implemented auto-room EQ ie. Audessey, what exactly are you referring to?

To my knowledge, there aren't many transparent and flexible parametric EQs out there in the high end audio market. You couldn't be talking about using a graphic EQ with hard-coded frequency bands and no adjustable Q. So what type of "tuning" are you describing?