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

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?

Its only opinion tuning unless you are prepared to show detailed graphs from REQ Wizard or something of that nature. Just "liking" something doesnt mean squat.

I've used the best processors from Denon, Marantz and Onkyo. The Denon and Onkyo units lived in my systems. I've also heard plenty of other units out there. I think they're all pretty good, but generally can't do analogue 2 channel very well. So what? That's what my tube gear is for.

Fast forward to the UMC-1, which not only sounded better on two channel music, but also less harsh and abrasive when watching movies (to my shock). Since I spent money making my dedicated theater room reasonably flat and free of harsh reflections, it's easy not to like Onkyo for example.

Now....as to using the mic and auto calibration on these units: They work "okay" at best and never really get it right. In fact I've NEVER heard an automated EQ system get it right in any room. BTW, my friend owns a shop and does installations. It's his bread & butter to do better than the these automated programs and he's well paid for it. FYI, he's done some work for some pretty heavy music industry clients in custom theaters far beyond mine in scope. Audessey is not part of the job. He's expected to do better.

Using the UMC-1 I can customize the levels, EQ and delay on each speaker; it takes time and careful experimentation to get correct. It also means using many reference sources and day after day of reevaluations. My friends and I are fairly high end users with this gear. It's okay to use the gee-wiz features on these processors, but you're kidding yourself if you think someone can't do better.

Now....using the Denon's gee-wiz system I was able to get closer FASTER to the final level of optimization. That's it's only value, as a STARTING point. If you want to get 40-70% of the system potential then rely entirely on Audessey. There is NO substitute to carefully tuning a system over time, which also includes tedious speaker placement, room treatments system matching. The very nature of the mics typically employed (and their placement) is the first of many problems that make Audessey (and all of it's cousins)a dorm room toy on the same level as sound bars and cheap tube amps for Ipods.

It's only natural to believe that these systems "get it right" since that's so much easier than carefully tweaking your system to an even higher level. If it sounds good to you (as users proclaim) than mission accomplished via Onkyo and all the rest. But it sure didn't sound good enough to me or my friends and quite a few others.

Cheers,

Rob