Emotiva XMC-1

Originally Posted by GaryWA 

Yep. However, you will need separate amplifiers to power your speakers. The XMC-1 processes the sound/video and sends them to the amplifier that powers the speakers. An AV receiver processes sound and has an integrated amplifier.

That's a very expensive preamp though.

Originally Posted by flashman03 

It isn't expensive compared to many per/pros. The downside is nobody knows if this will be a quality product or not.

Sent from my Motorola Galaxy s3 using Tapatalk 2

Originally Posted by Theresa 

Or if it will be an actual product or not.

Originally Posted by jevans64 

My deal with the XMC-1 is that it will be obsolete by the time it is finished. Marantz, Denon, etc. have a lot more resources to dump into creating a prepro. Something like the Marantz AV8801 is going to have a lot more features than the XMC-1, mainly support for an industry-standard room correction, like Audyssey, and more than 7.x channels along with their processing modes. If your cable runs are short like mine, less than three feet, then balanced connections between prepro and amp won't matter. A decent receiver with preamp outs will probably work just as well as the XMC-1 and amps. You'll have a much better selection if you choose a receiver with preamp outs over a prepro.

I'm not dogging Emotiva. I have an XPR-5, Airmotiv 5's, and plan on buying the Stealth 8's along with a UMC-200, DC-1, or Pre-1. They just have a poor track record as far as processors go because they don't have the resources to do a lot of complex R&D. Receivers, Preamps, and Processors are the most challenging products to develop. You have to orchestrate handfuls of electronics from different manufacturers and bang out a million lines of code in order to make it all work.

Originally Posted by umr 

The driving force force for many of these standards changes and features is to get you to change your gear. For the most part much of the basic audio functionality has been present since HDMI 1.1. I personally do not upgrade my audio gear for every change in specification that happens. There is also equipment that can be used to keep your audio gear and yet move to a different video standard.

Expecting any audio electronic product to do true room acoustics correction is wildly optimistic. Poor room acoustics is like having excessive light in a front projection system. Expecting some electronics in the projector to fix this is lacking understanding of the problem. Excessive room reverberation will mask the sound clarity and alter the ambient effect built-in to the recording. Electronics will not fix this. The best audio electronics can do in the face of equipment and room physics is get the channel level, phase and frequency response reasonable. Unfortunately, the automatic systems generally are not very good at even those things. The more correction you insert into the system the more likely you are to degrade the audio quality of the source. I believe an intelligent parsimonious approach to sound adjustment that takes into account your situation will likely yield much better results on average than a stupid computer program that uses a fixed set of logic, cheap microphone and a large number of parameters to attempt to fix all of your audio problems in an array of equations.

The exciting thing about the new Emotiva preamp processors is that the most recent units appear to have no severe software bugs along with great sound quality and extreme user flexibility. This is unlike Denon, Onkyo, Marantz and Integra products that provide only simple graphic equalizers when you find that Audyssey did an inadequate job. The new preamps from Emotiva appear to be very similar to the best unit I work on the Classe SSP-800 in providing full parametric equalization of each channel. They also seem to have easy control of user modes that tends to elude many other manufacturers.

I personally have one of these on preorder and expect to be using it for years to come if it turns out as good as I expect.

Originally Posted by rcos 

Emotiva is going to be In Naperville, IL tomorrow for their roadshow, I am expecting that they will have this unit on demo. I will take pictures and report what I uncover. Helps that the tickets are free and it's 5 minutes from my house:D

Originally Posted by bootman_head_fi 

With Audyssey DSX2 and HDMI 2.0 around the corner this year that is true for everything out there now, no?
OEMs need to eat, so "new and must have" features need to come out on a regular 6 month basis.

When do you stop?

I get that sources should turn around regularly (not every 6 months) to keep up with new formats, audio gear really shouldn't but the OEM have figured out a way to do so and have made good $$$ at it.

Think about it for a moment.
An AVR from 2005 should still be good in a modern HT is you have say an oppo.
If you need internet streaming or airplay, those can be has for $50 (roku)-100(airport) as an add on vs $3K for an AVP upgrade.

Look at some of the high end players. Parasound is analog only because they assume you are doing this very same thing.