OK, you're about to get banned from ASR... Just kidding. LOL
Amir is an experienced EE and has quite an interesting career having held important positions at large companies like Sony and Microsoft. Take a look at his bio (A bit about your host).
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Emotiva XMC-2 Review (AV Processor)
- Thread starter amirm
- Start date
Amir is an experienced EE and has quite an interesting career having held important positions at large companies like Sony and Microsoft. Take a look at his bio (A bit about your host).
Not sure what you’re trying to imply. They both measured almost the exact same THD, and they both look bad
The big difference is Emotiva’s doesn’t have massive LF noise and doesn’t have the timing errors. But I agree, Emotiva’s result isn’t all that much better. No longer “broken,” but not hifi and not commensurate with the price tag, in my opinion.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #185
The main difference is that I was only driving two channels and they are driving all 8. Someone commented that the bug in bass management may be the problem here and this would sort of point to that direction.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #186
Sample rate is also different (mine is 44.1 kHz and theirs is 48 khz). Also, the have set the bandwidth to 20 kHz whereas mine extends to 22.4 kHz.
Shimei
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Seems the exact same scientific process in testing must be repeated as well for peer review
I was wondering whether you published or offered your testing methods. Some have made the accusation that you share none therefore your results can't be repeated.
For a moment I thought both were observing the exact same evidence but resulting in two different narratives. Wouldn't be the first time I've observed that happen in areas of science.
Thank you Amirm!
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Shimei
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Wasn't implying anything other than variations or margin of error in testing whether by method or faulty unit. I was struck by a familiarity of why one paradigm might be abandoned for another paradigm. However, no reason to go there - I think Amir just clarified the difference of results.
By the way @amirm thank you for your reviews. I am pleased with my SMSL M400 to this day!
OP
- Thread Starter
- #189
I have. It is actually an article I wrote for WSR magazine. See: https://www.audiosciencereview.com/...derstanding-digital-audio-measurements.10523/
If I remember, I will link to it in future reviews so the question doesn't come up.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #190
The trick here is to get everyone to use the same measurements. Many times manufacturers use other settings that generate better numbers than I do (e.g. using a-weighting). A number of companies now use identical measurements to mine such as Denon & Marantz which gets rid of this finger pointing.
The anger and frustration should be pointed at the manufacturers by the way. If they had published proper measurements of their own, I could then check what I see against theirs and if different, look for reasons why. When they don't, I have no reference so have to go by what I am seeing. Note that I do cross check my work as much as I can by for example measuring using different inputs.
My hope and dream is that one day manufacturers build such great products that they don't mind then showing measurements for them. Then I can retire for the second time in peace.
OP
- Thread Starter
- #191
One more comment regarding what was said in the Emotival thread about firmware update. I nearly bricked an Arcam processor for attempting to update it. I got lucky that I got it back up after it hung for many hours. So while I try to update firmware often, I always worry especially if the device is this complicated and this expensive. If a $200 streamer gets bricked, I can buy another one for the owner. But that option doesn't exist for $3,000 processor and aggravation of sending it back and for to the company to fix.
Also, firmware updates are very important when testing functionality. That is not what I do. I am sending digital bits to a box and expect analog out. If getting this right required later firmware, something fundamentally is wrong with the whole product.
Also, firmware updates are very important when testing functionality. That is not what I do. I am sending digital bits to a box and expect analog out. If getting this right required later firmware, something fundamentally is wrong with the whole product.
You will always have plan C to fall back on. Plan C is to get the Music recording industry to develop and follow a Standard and bring an end to the loudness wars…So, yeah, keep working Amir!
They have not fixed the bug so i highly doubt they have a fix implemented in their test system thereby accounting for the difference. Could be but not based upon what i know about their progress on the bug
Interesting results. My RMC video, remote app and Harmony all provide speedy faultless performance. Setting up dual subs took more effort than the A110 I owned (and sold) but this thing sounds better than that unit or the X4700 I owned before it. The HTP-1 doesn’t have a true analog path so that one was knocked off my list. I bought a six month old RMC-1L at a big discount and like it a lot. I don’t understand how the results of the RMC you tested were so different than this XMC. Quality control? Maybe. But when to comes to my experience the RMC is a better sounding piece of gear than the Denon units your reference in your review comments. This is both in an analog (XLR) path using a node to X16 to the RMC in reference stereo and also HDMI from ATV 4K to the RMC playing Apple Atmos tracks. Not debunking what we see here, but speaking from someone who has had both set up and lived with.
Shimei
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Only way that usually happens is if government involves itself. And what usually happens is that the company with the most money will lobby politicians for a standardization that benefits technology of that particular company and not the consumer. Meanwhile, not much is made better when government involves itself. Many poor purchase decisions could be avoided if consumers educated themselves more on a product before they purchase.
I really appreciated @amirm's response and agree that all this finger pointing could be avoided if manufacturer specs and methods were published.
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OP
- Thread Starter
- #196
They are not using mix down in their test since it is 8 channels. So they wouldn't need to have a bug fix to get those results.
The Emotiva Lounge thread is going as usual along two general lines:
(1) It sounds great so who cares about measurements; and,
(2) Amir doesn't know what he's doing, SINAD is a bad metric (maybe we should call it THD+N, that seems more widely accepted, same measurement), etc.
The Lounge has always bled Emo blue with a "shoot the messenger" mentality if any flaws are highlighted.
As best I can tell after a quick skim, the RMC-1 and XMC-2 were tested the same, though FW revs are different, but there may be something flat-out broken in the unit Amir tested. I keep wanting to trade in my XMC-1, but almost two years later the XMC-2 still seems to have a lot of bugs.
Until then I'll just suffer along with my exorbitantly-priced third-party-engineered crappy old SDP-75 and accept the abuse from ASR naysayers (fora denizens are the same everywhere). At least it works.
I do wish Emotiva would return to the days of providing a very nice set of test results with their products. They used to be one of the good guys in that, but it seems to have fallen by the wayside, even for the amplifiers.
For now, I'd like to find the thread on the FTC amp specs update, wonder how that's going? I submitted my comments, as did a number of the rest of us techie types, curious.
(1) It sounds great so who cares about measurements; and,
(2) Amir doesn't know what he's doing, SINAD is a bad metric (maybe we should call it THD+N, that seems more widely accepted, same measurement), etc.
The Lounge has always bled Emo blue with a "shoot the messenger" mentality if any flaws are highlighted.
As best I can tell after a quick skim, the RMC-1 and XMC-2 were tested the same, though FW revs are different, but there may be something flat-out broken in the unit Amir tested. I keep wanting to trade in my XMC-1, but almost two years later the XMC-2 still seems to have a lot of bugs.
Until then I'll just suffer along with my exorbitantly-priced third-party-engineered crappy old SDP-75 and accept the abuse from ASR naysayers (fora denizens are the same everywhere). At least it works.
I do wish Emotiva would return to the days of providing a very nice set of test results with their products. They used to be one of the good guys in that, but it seems to have fallen by the wayside, even for the amplifiers.
For now, I'd like to find the thread on the FTC amp specs update, wonder how that's going? I submitted my comments, as did a number of the rest of us techie types, curious.
There's also a small amount of (3) "RMC-1 was measured with F/W 1.9, XMC-2 with F/W 2.3"
It would be really interesting to see what would happen to an RMC-1 on F/W 2.3... would it then align with the XMC-2 results? I'd love to find out.
Newman
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How about (4) "it could be a more cramped case construction, slight re-positioning or rotation of boards, slightly different earthing config, omission or value change of even 1 capacitor in a critical location...." None of that?
Tonewinner
