EMOTIVA Thread Q&A [TECHNICAL TALK ONLY] - Page 420

Originally Posted by goros

Thanks Keith, you're the man. I ordered enough to replace all my fuses twice, just in case. Hope I never need them.

Originally Posted by Theresa

It was price that led me to buy the UMC-1. I was very pleased with the sound once I got it. Looks hardly entered into it, if they had I wouldn't have bought it. I replaced it because of its bugs not looks. I do agree though that the lighting is garish and it is not very good looking IMHO.

Originally Posted by Theresa

Yes, they were quite a distraction. The Onkyo has a much less intrusive blue light above the knob that doesn't bother me. When I first got the UMC-1 I thought I'd get used to it but instead it wore on me.

Originally Posted by Bill Mac

I'm not a fan of the UMC-1s looks either but I bought one anyhow. I'm more interested in how a prepro sounds over how it looks. Interesting concept huh. I believe that is why many others including Theresa bought the UMC-1 as well. So to say it was dumb to buy the UMC-1 because one doesn't like the looks is kind of a harsh statement wouldn't you think?

Bill

Originally Posted by Theresa

Yes, they were quite a distraction. The Onkyo has a much less intrusive blue light above the knob that doesn't bother me. When I first got the UMC-1 I thought I'd get used to it but instead it wore on me.

Originally Posted by Bill Mac

I'm not a fan of the UMC-1s looks either but I bought one anyhow. I'm more interested in how a prepro sounds over how it looks. Interesting concept huh. I believe that is why many others including Theresa bought the UMC-1 as well. So to say it was dumb to buy the UMC-1 because one doesn't like the looks is kind of a harsh statement wouldn't you think?

Bill

Originally Posted by suffolk112000

I stand by what I said.
If Theresa bought the UMC-1 for the audio quality only that’s great, but then why is Theresa whining about the aesthetics?
Seems to me that one makes that decision at the time of the purchase… right?
It's sort of like buying a house that you love, knowing that a major airport is just a few hundred feet away at the time of the signing. Then, a month after moving in, you complain about the noise. LMAO.

Originally Posted by Theresa

It was price that led me to buy the UMC-1. I was very pleased with the sound once I got it. Looks hardly entered into it, if they had I wouldn't have bought it. I replaced it because of its bugs not looks. I do agree though that the lighting is garish and it is not very good looking IMHO.

Originally Posted by suffolk112000

I stand by what I said.
If Theresa bought the UMC-1 for the audio quality only that’s great, but then why is Theresa whining about the aesthetics?
Seems to me that one makes that decision at the time of the purchase… right?
It's sort of like buying a house that you love, knowing that a major airport is just a few hundred feet away at the time of the signing. Then, a month after moving in, you complain about the noise. LMAO.

Originally Posted by djbluemax1

Don't you hate bittersweet moments when it comes to a/v equipment?

Got the XPA-1's back and that's exactly what I got. On the plus side, I really do love the sound of these puppies. Reference volume sounds so effortless, and they do have quite a low noise floor. Is the noise floor lower than the bridged 5008? I'm not sure. They're both very good in that respect, and undoubtedly better than the P5000S. And the XPA-1's are musical.

I don't know exactly what it is about them but I would have thought that the noise floor aside, they would sound fairly similar to the P5000S which also put out 500wpc @ 8ohms, but while I was listening to music with the P5000S the pas week while the XPA-1's were away, I felt as if there was something a little off. Something that was not quite there. I thought that perhaps it was just the oddities of audio memory, and perhaps mood. But while waiting for the amps to arrive today, I was listening to more music with the P5000S driving the E100's and it still lacked that involvement for me.

The amps finally arrived and I hooked them up and there was aggravation. As I opened the boxes, one of the amps had a note that stated, "Main board faulty. Replaced Main board. Tested and working properly". The other amp had a note that seemed to indicate that they had done nothing to it.

I let the amps sit in the room for a few hours to allow any potential temperature differentials to even out, then carefully plugged everything in as before, and turned them on. Only took 10 seconds for the Right amp to start clicking madly (which is exactly what it did when the Left amp began smoking, which I assume was when the Left amp's trigger output fried).

I immediately shut the amps off and disconnected the Right amp's trigger input (which is daisy chained to the Left amp's trigger output). I tentatively turned the amps on again, and voila. This time, they both stayed on with no problems. After playing some music on the system for a bit, I decided to try reversing the daisy chain to see, if as had been surmised by myself (and the original tech I spoke to on the phone), the Left amp's trigger output was the culprit. So I pulled the mono trigger cable from the Left amp's input and stuck it in the Right amp's input, then daisy chained the Right amp's trigger output to the Left amp's input. Voila, it works just fine in this configuration.

So now I'm pissed. I specifically told the tech what the issue had been and wrote a separate note of each amp's (suspected) problems and included the individual specific notes in each box. After hefting these hernia inducing behemoths to the UPS store and paying $150 to ship both these amps back to Emo, they fixed one amp and didn't fix the other. Brilliant.

And despite being annoyed at the sheer stupidity of this situation, while I was listening to more music while checking to make sure that neither of the amps demonstrated any further problems, I realized that what I had felt was missing while listening to them powered by the P5000S was back. I don't know how to describe it other than simple sheer musicality. Weird. But now I have to ship the Left amp back to Emo AGAIN for the same stupid problem that they didn't fix.


Max

Originally Posted by kbarnes701

I assume that you will ask Emotiva to pay the return carriage in both directions for the amp they didn't fix - it will be interesting to see if they comply. Do they know we are all watching them like hawks?

Originally Posted by kbarnes701

For people who have their hardware in the same room as their screen, all these lights must be a nightmare - especially when you can't switch them off, like the big blue power button light on the Emo amps. If those amps were in my viewing room I'd have to tape over the blue lights - some aesthetics then huh? IMO, for HT gear, if a manufacturer wants to festoon the gear with lights, they ought to have a way of turning them off.

Originally Posted by kbarnes701

It would drive me nuts, Theresa. Even if the gear is not in the line of sight, and often it is, the sheer light output of all those LEDs is enough to cast significant light into the room. Just one single red LED on the TV in my bedroom creates enough light for me to see if I need to get to get up in the night! Of course, in the latter circs, my night vision is at its best having been asleep for some time, but you get the point. And if the lights blink or change or do anything that draws even more attention to them, I'd real go nuts! Maybe it's just me

Originally Posted by kbarnes701

For people who have their hardware in the same room as their screen, all these lights must be a nightmare - especially when you can't switch them off, like the big blue power button light on the Emo amps. If those amps were in my viewing room I'd have to tape over the blue lights - some aesthetics then huh? IMO, for HT gear, if a manufacturer wants to festoon the gear with lights, they ought to have a way of turning them off.

Originally Posted by kbarnes701

Good idea. I have 10 spares for 3 amps (not counting the UPA2 I own but don't currently use).

Originally Posted by djbluemax1

Yes, I just sent them an email and plan to call them during business hours later today. I already paid to ship the amp to them once. I don't feel I should have to pay to ship it twice when it was someone's neglect on their end that resulted in one of them not being fixed. They should have fixed it before shipping it back ESPECIALLY when I included a note that explicitly stated what I thought the problem was. As there was no other problem with that amp (it would play just fine, even before I sent it in for repair), I'm inclined to think they never even checked the trigger output circuit.

It would appear that instead, all they did was hook the amps up to some speakers and go, "Yep, this one won't stay on. The other seems to play just fine. We'll fix the one that won't stay on and send 'em both back". I don't think they even bothered checking the trigger output on the amp where I specifically left a note stating that I believed the trigger output had fried as I had seen SMOKE come out the top of the amp.


Max

Originally Posted by Theresa

I've said before that lighting some incense and candles makes everything sound more mellow. As for the XPA-1s quality control, its getting harder and harder for me to recommend Emo.

Originally Posted by d_m1010

I even keep a light on in my HT when watching films/playing video games. I detest sitting in the dark.

Originally Posted by Theresa

I personally love the dark, I get up at 3am and that certainly insures my getting enough of it here in Minnesota. The darker my watching/listening space is, the better it is. The UMC-1 is so bright that it throws shadows in a darkened room.

Originally Posted by homeav

You can turn off the meters on most Emo amps. That defeats most of the light output.

I don't think the blue power light is bright... and if it's that distracting... easy enough to relocate it.

Originally Posted by kbarnes701

I doubt if Emotiva is any better or worse than any other manufacturer. If you look at any of the threads on here, they are catalogues of problems, faults and failures. It's the nature of forums to attract people with problems I guess. For every Emo user whom you see with a problem there are probably X more (insert your own value for X as we have no way of knowing) who have had faultless performance (me, for example). Onkyo even has special threads devoted to the failures of their AVRs! What is frustrating for Max isn't so much that one of his XPA-1s developed a fault (the other was damaged by the fault in the first one) but that Emotiva did not rectify the fault in the other amp despite having had clear directions from Max and having the unit on their bench for a number of days. If you were only ever going to recommend gear on the basis of it having no known faults, you'd never be able to recommend anything - including your new 5508, which I understand you do like and would therefore, possibly, recommend. But others have had to return 5508s for various fault conditions and, as you have observed, the darn things run so hot you even have to add PC fans to them to make them reliable!

Originally Posted by goros

Yeah I have an XPA-5 and 3 UPA-2's, all plugged directly into the wall, but protected with cutler hammer whole house surge protection (CH panel with a CHSPT2Ultra) as well as being on dedicated 20 amp AFCI/GFCI circuit breakers.

My big issue now is that I have the XPA-5 on its own 20amp breaker, and the 3 upa-2's on a second 20amp breaker - but the denon 4311ci doesn't have a time delay option for the 12v triggers...so all 4 amps fire at once and the 3 UPA-2's trip the breaker coming out of standby.

My Integra 40.2 had the ability to delay the 12v triggers by up to 3 seconds each, which kept the breaker from popping (chained the 12v into one upa-2 into the xpa-5, and the 2nd trigger into the 2 remaining upa-2's).

I'd love to see Emotiva come out with a 12v trigger module with time delay options, I'd buy one immediately.

Originally Posted by Theresa

The very real problem of REALLY cheap RCA jacks is universal for Emo. That's not to say that other brands don't have just as cheap of jacks. I still recommend Emo amps with the recommendation that you can buy more than one and still save over buying any other brand and they are better than nearly any receiver's amp section.

Originally Posted by kbarnes701

Yes I know what you mean there. I have my AVR trigger go into the first UPA-2, from there into the second UPA-2 and from there into the XPA-3 and you're right, they all power on simultaneously. In the UK we have 240 volt power so it doesn't cause an issue that they all come up together but I can see your POV. Can’t think of an easy fix to it short of designing a custom circuit for the triggers though.