Emotiva RMC-1 AV Processor Review

[Dj7675]

Better do both.

Today’s surprise though, was not that the specs weren’t published, we already knew that, but that they weren’t immediately available to present and possibly contradict @amirm numbers.

Don’t they own a AP device?

I was told by Hair Nick from Emotiva they had 7-8 in house.

 

[SOWK]

I am surprised that these measurements were not available in Emotiva’s drawer for immediate presentation.

They have to buy a DAC with good measurements first to get good graphs to show....

 

[Russ_L]

Its the same as every single other audio forum. These type of people don't care about buying a good product, if it sounds ok its good enough for them. They just want to flaunt their gear and don't care about high fidelity.

The worst part is they don't know what the APX555 actually is.

And the fact that we on this forum do know what the APX is and does makes us better somehow?? If it was not for HT (install and sales) brick and mortar audio shops would be practically non-existent. Don’t get me wrong I’m a measurements guy above all.

Russ

 

[Dimifoot]

I was told by Hair Nick from Emotiva they had 7-8 in house.

So what? They haven’t already performed these measurements on their products?

Why do they need an extra day to post them?

OK, let’s wait and see what their measurements show, it might be that this unit is defective or something.

 

[GeorgeWalk]

They have to buy a DAC with good measurements first to get good graphs to show....

They have to wait for the Topping D90 to arrive.

 

[Dj7675]

This from Lonnie at Emotiva Lounge:
"I have to admit I'm a little surprised at all the varying comments about the review. I guess it shouldn't because people are passionate about this. So please indulge me for a minute and allow me to give you my perspective. His review, at least in how I see it, is his opinion of the unit just like everyone else. That is to say, everyone who has one of our processors, amps, pre-amps, CD-player and on has an opinion about it be it good, bad or indifferent. The only difference is his review has some AP test with it. The AP is a very powerful tool that was designed to standardize the industry and for all practical purposes has, if you use the standardized test. We run the same test in the same way as virtually every other audio company in the world. He sees things differently and has chosen to run his own test in his own way. I'm not saying he's wrong or right, its simply different. Just like everyone's opinion of their gear is different. For me, I respect his opinion, but I don't agree with it. I know what our gear does and the specs we get far exceed what he is showing and on that note, I have to apologize for not getting those posted today. We were running test for one of the licensed technology providers (i.e. DTS) and were not able to get them posted. I'm sorry but when they call, we jump.

. We will get up early tomorrow and you can decide for yourselves.

As always, thanks very much for all the support,

Lonnie "

 

[Russ_L]

I posted a couple of follow-ups. Already got a couple of messages basically saying to STFU since I am not an owner (and probably never will be). But I couldn't let some of the assertions go without some challenges. One guy said the PC generates the signal? Really? If you're going to act authorative, it would be nice to have at least some idea how the AP works...

And I would fully expect HDMI performance to be worse, and and best no better than, the performance using the regular digital inputs. HDMI tends to add, not subtract, noise. It is a video standard with a slap at audio IMO.

All digital inputs in the XMC, RMC, etc. see an ASRC so HDMI audio performance should be no different than for any other digital input.

Russ

 

[Russ_L]

From Lonnie:


Hopefully, there will be similar tests and compare results to enter into a technical discussion.

The front panel blue OLED Display and LEDs can be turned off.
The RMC-1 boot up time is in the 1 minute neighborhood which, I believe is similar to the HTP-1 and XMC-1.
I don't know why any of these processors take so long to initialize, it is annoying and makes it nearly impossible to program IR macros.

- Rich

Most Emotiva professor users default to Video Always On standby mode. This allows HDMI pass through with the power off. Boot time is zip in this mode.

Russ

 

[doodlebro]

a SINAD (THD + Noise) of 96 is required to resolve CD quality audio

This is why Amir's Army has a bad rap... We're letting measurement at the limits of these devices conflate with audible differences.

Theoretically, a CD can achieve a dynamic range of 96dB (and higher with dithering... yada yada). In practice this will never be the case.

I'm not that surprised by the reaction over there when we're saying things like "SINAD of 96 dB is required." Then again our biggest problem has always been bridging the gap between what is shown in measurements and what is audible to 99% of us.

 

[Dimitri]

This from Lonnie at Emotiva Lounge:

Thanks for the laugh!

 

[amirm]

Better do both.

Today’s surprise though, was not that the specs weren’t published, we already knew that, but that they weren’t immediately available to present and possibly contradict @amirm numbers.

Don’t they own a AP device?

I let them know my review was coming on Friday of last week. Any counter measurements should have been ready to go already.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Emotiva has a history of publishing specs for some gear and not others. Those where it isn't in the manual have a tendency to not measure well when measured. Imagine that. I bet somehow these measures don't get released. You can look at the measurements I made of the UMC200 which were not good at all. It was commented on just a bit in the Emotiva forums. Not disputed, and since not a current unit I guess not worth them bothering to say much about.

 

[MZKM]

This is why Amir's Army has a bad rap... We're letting measurement at the limits of these devices conflate with audible differences.

Theoretically, a CD can achieve a dynamic range of 96dB (and higher with dithering... yada yada). In practice this will never be the case.

I'm not that surprised by the reaction over there when we're saying things like "SINAD of 96 dB is required." Then again our biggest problem has always been bridging the gap between what is shown in measurements and what is audible to 99% of us.

Sure, but when a $9 dongle can produce these results, it makes one wonder how a $5000 device that is just meant to a DAC, audio decoder, and have EQ can perform at this level. The $1000 Pioneer receiver (meaning processor + amps) had a similar SINAD; if you just need 9ch and 1.5Vrms (and don’t care about the DSP), you can save $4000.

 

[amirm]

This from Lonnie at Emotiva Lounge:
"I have to admit I'm a little surprised at all the varying comments about the review. I guess it shouldn't because people are passionate about this. So please indulge me for a minute and allow me to give you my perspective. His review, at least in how I see it, is his opinion of the unit just like everyone else. That is to say, everyone who has one of our processors, amps, pre-amps, CD-player and on has an opinion about it be it good, bad or indifferent. The only difference is his review has some AP test with it. The AP is a very powerful tool that was designed to standardize the industry and for all practical purposes has, if you use the standardized test. We run the same test in the same way as virtually every other audio company in the world. He sees things differently and has chosen to run his own test in his own way. I'm not saying he's wrong or right, its simply different. Just like everyone's opinion of their gear is different. For me, I respect his opinion, but I don't agree with it. I know what our gear does and the specs we get far exceed what he is showing and on that note, I have to apologize for not getting those posted today.

As always, thanks very much for all the support,

Lonnie "

Wow. Now objective measurements are opinions. Well, whatever they post tomorrow then is an opinion that we can ignore as well.

We were running test for one of the licensed technology providers (i.e. DTS) and were not able to get them posted. I'm sorry but when they call, we jump.

. We will get up early tomorrow and you can decide for yourselves.

I don't understand why making measurements to counter mine was not as big of a priority. It takes 5 minutes to setup and run the dashboard 1 kHz tone.

Wonder what the DTS test was about anyway. Certification or miss thereof? That is the only thing I can think of that would make them jump as otherwise DTS pulls the license from them.

 

[Blumlein 88]

This is why Amir's Army has a bad rap... We're letting measurement at the limits of these devices conflate with audible differences.

Theoretically, a CD can achieve a dynamic range of 96dB (and higher with dithering... yada yada). In practice this will never be the case.

I'm not that surprised by the reaction over there when we're saying things like "SINAD of 96 dB is required." Then again our biggest problem has always been bridging the gap between what is shown in measurements and what is audible to 99% of us.

I can see that to some extent. OTOH, if paying $5k gets thoroughly mediocre performance (almost equals $9 dongle) what are you paying for? It isn't fast snappy UI, or anything some other devices can't offer. So what is the reason to pay $5K for this Emotiva vs a unit for half that much from Marantz? Well it has some extra channels. The $4500 Marantz more or less matches that. And the Marantz has mediocre performance too.

 

[Blumlein 88]

Wow. Now objective measurements are opinions. Well, whatever they post tomorrow then is an opinion that we can ignore as well.


I don't understand why making measurements to counter mine was not as big of a priority. It takes 5 minutes to setup and run the dashboard 1 kHz tone.

Wonder what the DTS test was about anyway. Certification or miss thereof? That is the only thing I can think of that would make them jump as otherwise DTS pulls the license from them.

Well you could have tried to match how they use their AP, and see if you meet their spec under their test conditions couldn't you Amir?
OOPS!

You can't because they didn't publish any specs. My opinion is their specs aren't going to be very good. My opinion is your objective measures are quite reliable. All they can possibly do is test with different levels and loads. That isn't boosting this unit out of its place on the list by any 25 db.

 

[amirm]

Is that actually AUDIBLE above?

Maybe it is. Maybe it isn't. With an excellent implementation I can guarantee you that it would not audible to anyone. Screw up the implementation and then the answer is "maybe." Your hearing has a dynamic range of 116 dB. Ideally you want a distortion and noise-free floor of -116 dB. With just bass processing turned on, you are down to just 85 dB with RMC-1. This, with a DAC chip that is capable of absolutely transparent performance.

I like a black and white world where something is either provably transparent across all people, content and situations, or not. When you pay a huge premium for an A/V device, this is what you should be getting. No worries. No guesses as to whether what you hear is transparent to the source or not.

Remember, premium parts were used in this processor. They were marked up heavily and you were charged for them. Given the demonstrated performance, they could have used far lower grade parts (i.e. what goes in an Apple $9 dongle) and even then, do better than they are doing now. You paid for premium Prime steak, but got cheap Select grade.

 

[amirm]

I was told by Hair Nick from Emotiva they had 7-8 in house.

A lot of old APs are used for production/QA testing. Counting those is not proper.

 

[Maconi]

Better do both.

Today’s surprise though, was not that the specs weren’t published, we already knew that, but that they weren’t immediately available to present and possibly contradict @amirm numbers.

Don’t they own a AP device?

It's obvious they're just in damage control mode, trying to discredit @amirm personally (Ad Hominem) while claiming that his test wasn't performed properly (to "industry standards").

We've been asking Emotiva for proper measurements on the RMC-1 for months and they've held out. The only reason they're doing it now is because @amirm forced their hand. I'm going to assume there will be a lot of smoke/mirrors accompanying their measurements.

 

[MZKM]

You paid for premium Prime steak, but got cheap Select grade.

You paid for authentic Japanese A7 Wagyu but got American version instead that they advertise as simply “Wagyu“ at burger joints.

Here’s a fact, there are only around a dozen restaurants in the US that sell authentic Kobe beef, so most f us that have ordered it got a knockoff.
https://www.businessinsider.com/8-restaurants-that-serve-real-kobe-beef-2016-7