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Emotiva XMC-2 Review (AV Processor)

sarumbear

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Their pricing is also absolutely ludicrous and performance is still not even close to state of the art. They basically don't exist, as far as typical end users go, so no. The rule still holds.
Trinnov supplies Harman, the JBP Synthesis AVR is made by them. They have 8000 installations worldwide and are represented in 55 countries. Just because you think their price is too expensive doesn't make them small. Similar with Storm, they have 1000+ installations and represented in around 30 countries. Your analogy with Pagani, which is basically a glorified garage, manufacturing 40 cars a year, is not valid.

Between them they produced 8000 units. How can you say they do not exist?

In short a small company can and do produce decent AVRs and support them. Unlike this one...
 
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sarumbear

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But look at their cost relative to other AVR's. I know their performance is superior but the price premium is ridiculous IMO.
Not ridiculous, you either can't afford them or not want to pay for them. 8000 have paid for their devices.
 

peng

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May I remind you that both Storm and Trinnov are small companies with 40-50 employees. There’s this fallacy that unless you are a global behemoth like Harman you can’t produce AVRs. Those two prove alone that it is not the case.

Not a fallacy in terms of resource limitations and cost efficiency (R&D, engineering, procurement/purchasing, production, sales and marketing, after sales support etc..) Unlike the highly matured products such as preamp and power amps, feature rich AVRs/AVPs are much more complicated and there are much more that must be done right and lots can go wrong.
 

peng

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Which were demonstrated not to be a limitation at least by Storm as reported by @amirm

That's good for them if they got everything right and prove to be reliable over time. My comments are for in general, and in relative sense only.
 

Rottmannash

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Not ridiculous, you either can't afford them or not want to pay for them. 8000 have paid for their devices.
8000 vs how many hundreds of thousands for Onkyo, Marantz, Denon, Sony, Monoprice, Emotiva, etc?
 

sarumbear

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There is a reason there is only one Chinese manufacturer making these.

Can you tell me the name of the manufacturer, please?

Those products are made possible due to their pricing.

Price is not an issue on ASR is it? @amirm tests products raging from less than $10 to more than $5,000. The argument I have is against people who say small companies cannot produce AVRs. I am proving that at least two small companies are doing just that and doing that pretty successfully. Just because some (me included) cannot afford them doesn't change the argument.
 

sarumbear

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jam

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I waited for a couple months but since they never posted any specs or measurements of the XMC-2 I didn't order. In retrospect it turned out to be a good decision for me. I went with the X8500 which I used for almost 2 years and never had one issue with it. I am now using a Storm MK2 and enjoying it throughouly.
Storm Audio have a very interesting product line sporting Dirac Live. They offer as an option upgrade boards with digital AES/EBU outputs which would allow one to use their prefered multi-channel DAC solution. They also have an all digital unit without analogs outputs: the ISP 32 Digital AES/AVB MK2 at $19K . The only hitch is the very high price. :cool:
 

Zooqu1ko

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And your point is?

Besides, Momentum Data Systems (MDS) is also a small company :)
My point is that neither Storm nor Trinnov have developed an AVP on their own from scratch. They both have skipped one of the really hard problems (Codecs and HDMI) by buying third party products. There's no shame in that, just that these aren't good examples that small companies can develop AVPs.

MDS might actually be a good example - apparently almost all the boards in the HTP-1 are made by them (except the main CPU, an A20 on a board by Olimex). However, I'm not sure who is actually responsible for the (main CPU) firmware)
 

Shimei

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Lonnie from Emotiva just chimed in on this review's measurements. Seems Amir's results weren't repeated: https://emotivalounge.proboards.com/thread/59158/asr-xmc-2-review

Now what concerning peer review?

I'm most curious about ASR's "scientific" process and dialogue that'll result.

ASR-Review.jpg
 
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sarumbear

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My point is that neither Storm nor Trinnov have developed an AVP on their own from scratch.
What is got to do with us, the end user? Every company buys in something. Does VW, BMW, Mercedes manufacture their gear boxes? It is the result that the consumer care.

Those companies don't have issues like this and when they do they reach out and help properly. This device is not priced that far off that some find it ridiculous. How is it even possible that support can argue with a customer that the headphone out is designed to be out of phase.

Configuring the unit through the front panel was painful as some options would take as much as 5 seconds to take effect (e.g. User EQ). Worse yet, it would buffer all the clicks and then act on them in sequence making it maddening to operate.
[...]
There were other strange things like selecting the Direct mode and then back causing the output voltage to jump to 7+ volts. But the moment I would touch the volume control, it would go back to near 4 volts as I had it set.

Another note on the RMC-1L, my unit arrived with the left and right channels of the headphone jack wired out of phase. It took several tries for me to convince their support people that this was a real problem. Ultimately, Emotiva sent me a replacement ribbon cable with two of the leads crossed and some instructions on how to take the unit apart so that I can repair it myself. This, for a $4k unit??! That's pretty poor customer service.
 

jam

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You kind of nailed it - IIRC there's less than a handful of chip companies making AVR processors, Texas Instruments is "the one" for most if not all. Additionally, the Arcam, JBL and Audio Control AVRs are already built on the same platform for their Dirac solution.
Don't forget Analog Devices (AD) with their line of Sharc DSPs, which is used as much as TI if not more. Denon/Marantz and Emotiva use those. Design houses like Momentum Design Systems also have solutions with AD.
 

sarumbear

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jkcashin

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Locked but visible.
It went off the rails with "is this guys a quack" but honestly, there were a number of defenders there.

- Rich
I am the person who started the thread and asked "Is this guy a quack".
In retrospect, I should not have written that... I took a shortcut using "quack" to just mean "is this guy [Amir} credible". I ran it past a few friends and they all said I should not have worded it this way and I would like to apologize to Amir and anyone else who might see this as an accusation that Amir is a quack... that was not my intention at all. I just wanted to know if this was a credible reviewer.
 

Shimei

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THD still doesn’t look good at all

Considering the margin of error between Amir's and Lonnie's two tests how can anyone make a conclusive statement?

Is this where everyone departs from the scientific process and sides w/ their most favorite test/reviewer? I hope people are capable of separating any emotional attachment from the subject/topic in attempts to be objective.
 

Shimei

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