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Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player (DAC) Review

Rate this CD Player/DAC:

  • 1. Poor (headless panther)

    Votes: 133 84.2%
  • 2. Not terrible (postman panther)

    Votes: 23 14.6%
  • 3. Fine (happy panther)

    Votes: 2 1.3%
  • 4. Great (golfing panther)

    Votes: 0 0.0%

  • Total voters
    158

amirm

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This is a review and detailed measurements of the DAC portion of the Emotiva ERC-4 CD player. It is on kind loan from a member and costs US $649.
Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC balanced review.jpg

The display lights up in classic, intense dark blue colors of Emotiva. I am not a fan of it as it is old fashioned. Not much functionality is here other than acting as a DAC with inclusion of S/PDIF and Toslink inputs:

Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC balanced rear panel review.jpg


Wish there was a USB input however. On positive front, the remote is metal, feels substantial and has a cool, magnetic back to open and replace the AA batteries. LIke the XLR outputs and high quality RCA connectors.

As noted, this is a test of the unit using it as a DAC. I wanted to test it as a CD player as well but my test CD had broken in half. :(

Speaking of something broken, so was the ERC-4. It would not function even though the front panel controls were operational. I took the top off and noticed the ribbon cable plug was loose:
Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Coax Input Teardown.jpg

Pushed it in and the unit started to work. Owner had noticed intermittent problem as well. He had bought it last year. Clearly Emotiva needs to glue down that ribbon cable or tie it down better.

Emotiva ERC-4 DAC Measurements
I was shocked and quite disappointed in the dashboard measurements of the ERC-4:
Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Toslink Input Measurements.png

Output voltage is too low (should be 4 volts). There is some kind of spurious tone at 600 Hz or so. And variable noise in the red channel. SINAD can't even clear the 16 bit mark which is embarrassing compared to even bargain DACs today:
Best CD player review.png


Company spec is "0.0015%" which is about what I measured for the good channel so our measurements are representative of the company target.

RCA output is the same as XLR:

Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Coax Input Measurements.png


SNR is barely adequate:
Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Coax Input DNR Measurements.png


Linearity is not competitive for a DAC but good enough as a CD player:
Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Coax Input Linearity Measurements.png


IMD distortion is what we would get out of a generic sub $60 DAC:

Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Coax Input IMD Measurements.png


Jitter test shows high noise floor and jitter spikes:
Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Coax Input Jitter Measurements.png


Filter attenuation is poor:
Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Coax Input  Filter Measurements.png


Which highly reduces the performance in wideband noise+distortion test:
Emotiva ERC-4 CD Player DAC Coax Input THD vs Frequency Measurements.png


The dashed blue line is multi-year old $99 DAC!

Conclusions
The back panel and internal custom board makes one think the performance of ERC-4 is very good. Alas, looks are deceiving. Performance is disappointing across every measurement. Performance is not even good enough to provide transparency for 16 bit content let alone something higher. I could not help but constantly think that Emotiva has contempt for its customers to not even try to build something more performant. Clearly they put in the effort. But did not measure their work to see if they created something excellent.

I can't recommend the Emotiva ERC-4. Anyone building a CD player at this price needs to ship a superb product some 40+ years after introduction of the format!

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As always, questions, comments, recommendations, etc. are welcome.

Any donations are much appreciated using: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/forum/index.php?threads/how-to-support-audio-science-review.8150/
 

ryanosaur

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Wish I understood what Emo was really about. They seem like they should be able to put out a competent product, but outside of people that like their Speakers and the cost of most of their product, they just don't deliver.
Personally, I was about to buy some of their Amps several years ago and reached out to ask some tech questions about the performance of the modules they used and their Tech Team couldn't answer about simple output questions. *shrugs
Oh well.
 

AndreaT

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So, a balanced output that is not to balanced specs, lack of AES/EBU digital out, poor performance of the DAC, old user interface, shoddy build quality, noisy. Another nail in the coffin a company asleep at the wheel in the engineering department.
Thank you Amir for steering us far from these low-quality products.
 

wwenze

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Anyone building a CD player at this price needs to ship a superb product some 40+ years after introduction of the format!

1) CD-ROM drive with SPDIF out: $10 from junk pile along with that weird AC adapter with molex output
2) Topping E30 II: $149

0.00015% for <$200

Technically I'm wrong because that's not possible with 16-bit but hey, details details.
 

DWPress

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yuck
 

phoenixdogfan

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Obviously not a good performer. But I bet it's not very different in its performance from any number of CD players of the same vintage. I suspect that a whole lot of them basically sucked even onto the point where it was audible.

Moreover, it would be extremely interesting if someone would find a really early, 1980's vintage CD player and send it in for testing to Amir. I, for one, would like to see how it measured. The betting is it would come nowhere near even some of the poorer performing DAC units that get the shrugging or even the headless panther. If we look at and measure a few of those units we might see how digital acquired its initially terrible reputation among audiophiles. Would be an interesting exercise.
 

Blumlein 88

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Obviously not a good performer. But I bet it's not very different in its performance from any number of CD players of the same vintage. I suspect that a whole lot of them basically sucked even onto the point where it was audible.

Moreover, it would be extremely interesting if someone would find a really early, 1980's vintage CD player and send it in for testing to Amir. I, for one, would like to see how it measured. The betting is it would come nowhere near even some of the poorer performing DAC units that get the shrugging or even the headless panther. If we look at and measure a few of those units we might see how digital acquired its initially terrible reputation among audiophiles. Would be an interesting exercise.
I don't think you'd find the results you expect. @restorer-john can supply some of the specs that they met long ago. Many were quite good. Not 24 bit good because it was a 16 bit medium, but CD players didn't sound as bad as the revisionist history makes you think.

Emotiva seems to want to supply everything you see to make you think it is a bargain with quality equivalent to more expensive gear while giving you performance substandard for the price. What is odd, is it likely wouldn't take more than a very small amount of effort to give reasonably good performance and likely at no additional cost.

I'd like to see performance of a couple of current inexpensive bluray players (which can play CDs).
 

restorer-john

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Moreover, it would be extremely interesting if someone would find a really early, 1980's vintage CD player and send it in for testing to Amir.

Amir would need either the CBS-CD1, the Sony YEDs or one of the early Philips test discs. They are now as rare as rocking horse chit and my discs are going nowhere. If I had duplicates, I'd send him one, but I don't. The CBS-CD1 is the one to grab, maybe someone has contacts in the US and can find one- they weren't anywhere near as expensive as the Sony or Philips sets. But even if you find a disc, it has to be absolutely unmarked.

The AP is quite capable of measuring the players, but it cannot control them and without an industry standard test disc (not a copy or burnt one) it's not really possible. The test discs are extremely precise in terms of eccentricity, reflectivity and pit/land geometry as well as the signals encoded on the disc.

Attached is a PDF I made of one of the earliest group tests by Louis Challis and associates here in Australia as soon as he got hold of the test discs in 1983. There are a few small errors in a couple of the reviews, but considering the scale of the testing, it's pretty darn good.
 

Attachments

  • a discerning discourse on cd players challis.pdf
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restorer-john

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If we look at and measure a few of those units we might see how digital acquired its initially terrible reputation among audiophiles. Would be an interesting exercise.

I have several Sony CDP-101s (the worlds first commercially released player). I measured THD much lower than the linked PDF above by Louis Challis. At first I figured it was my mistake until I looked at his THD calculations- see if you can spot the error/s :)
 

antcollinet

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Amir would need either the CBS-CD1, the Sony YEDs or one of the early Philips test discs. They are now as rare as rocking horse chit and my discs are going nowhere. If I had duplicates, I'd send him one, but I don't. The CBS-CD1 is the one to grab, maybe someone has contacts in the US and can find one- they weren't anywhere near as expensive as the Sony or Philips sets. But even if you find a disc, it has to be absolutely unmarked.

The AP is quite capable of measuring the players, but it cannot control them and without an industry standard test disc (not a copy or burnt one) it's not really possible. The test discs are extremely precise in terms of eccentricity, reflectivity and pit/land geometry as well as the signals encoded on the disc.

Attached is a PDF I made of one of the earliest group tests by Louis Challis and associates here in Australia as soon as he got hold of the test discs in 1983. There are a few small errors in a couple of the reviews, but considering the scale of the testing, it's pretty darn good.
Presumably the specialist test CDs are needed for testing the capability of the laser pickup/head mechanics? I assume we just want to measure the electronics/DAC stage, then appropriate test files burnt to CDR would suffice.

Or am I massively showing my ignorance?
 

restorer-john

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Presumably the specialist test CDs are needed for testing the capability of the laser pickup/head mechanics? I assume we just want to measure the electronics/DAC stage, then appropriate test files burnt to CDR would suffice.

Or am I massively showing my ignorance?

Many of the earliest CD players will not read CDRs as their reflectivity and pit geometry is totally different to a proper commercially stamped disc. As such, those players may appear to 'play' (or just refuse to start up a CDR), but could be heavily error correcting up to the point of interpolating or even muting, which causes issues with measuring THD, especially at high frequencies with pure tones. Trust me, the first thing I did decades ago was burn a few copies of my test discs (in case I damaged them) thinking the same thing, only to discover I couldn't really use them for precision THD testing. And they were TDK 1 to 1 burns on either CDR or consumer TDK CDRs. EAC will show the disc to be perfect, with 100% confidence etc, no EC boxes, but that doesn't help a 1st gen machine if it cannot focus or determine pit/land transitions on a dye based CDR.

The other issues are numerous, but even a player that 'plays' a CDR, may be needlessly driving the tracking/focus servos out of typical range to keep the disc on track and playing. Those out of spec servo currents can manifest as power supply modulations in other parts of the player and degrade their performance.

For accurate CD player testing, calibrated test CDs are really the only way. The best source for the Sony YEDs discs is Japan. Keep an eye on ebay. :)
 

antcollinet

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Many of the earliest CD players will not read CDRs as their reflectivity and pit geometry is totally different to a proper commercially stamped disc. As such, those players may appear to 'play' (or just refuse to start up a CDR), but could be heavily error correcting up to the point of interpolating or even muting, which causes issues with measuring THD, especially at high frequencies with pure tones. Trust me, the first thing I did decades ago was burn a few copies of my test discs (in case I damaged them) thinking the same thing, only to discover I couldn't really use them for precision THD testing. And they were TDK 1 to 1 burns on either CDR or consumer TDK CDRs. EAC will show the disc to be perfect, with 100% confidence etc, no EC boxes, but that doesn't help a 1st gen machine if it cannot focus or determine pit/land transitions on a dye based CDR.

The other issues are numerous, but even a player that 'plays' a CDR, may be needlessly driving the tracking/focus servos out of typical range to keep the disc on track and playing. Those out of spec servo currents can manifest as power supply modulations in other parts of the player and degrade their performance.

For accurate CD player testing, calibrated test CDs are really the only way. The best source for the Sony YEDs discs is Japan. Keep an eye on ebay. :)

Damn - I should have realised that. I even (now) vaguely remember later CD players being marketed as CDR compatible.
 

KSTR

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Output voltage is too low (should be 4 volts).
To my knowledge there is no sort of standard for consumer devices that says balanced output level shall be 2x unbalanced output level.

When XLR was introduced to consumer gear, some engineers simply added an inverter to the existing output which of course doubles output voltage. Other only provided impedance-balanced output which is perfectly viable and does not change levels and can be used as is for single-ended, often seen for 1/4" TRS outputs.

On professional gear, genuine balanced output was either fully floating transformer-type or active servo-balanced which then gives the same output voltage regardless of how it is connected. Again, only lately designers have adopted to hard-driven voltage symmetric outputs which cannot be used single-ended in the classic way as that would short out one leg. Nonetheless, output level for "parallel" single-ended and balanced output often is the same (for RME ADI-2 Pro, for example, and at some point they offered impedance balancing to the TRS "single-ended" output which now is truly balanced as per requirement).
 

Dmitri

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Thanks Amir for this review. I’m still one clinging on to his cd player(s) and discs…always last on the boat and going down with the ship with formats in decline. ; ) The Emotiva series of players always looked like pretty classy units…and though I’ve never trusted Emotiva for product consistency, had in the past occasionally been tempted to push the purchase button on this particular item. Haven't checked in awhile, but as Emo turns over and discontinues product like there’s no tomorrow and yesterday just a passing thought, I don’t know if they sell this unit anymore…but if so…you likely saved me some not as disposable as I would like hard earned cash.

ASR‘s mission accomplished.
 
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