Emotiva

i have owned their preamp, upa-2 amp, and 2 of their upa-1 monoblocks. when i first started to get into this game, only 1 1/2 years ago, i started out with Emotiva because i didnt know any better and i seen everybody at blu-ray.com brag about them. i have since gained a little bit of knowledge and started to demo everyting i could. with that, Emotiva builds a decent product and their customer service is very good. i think their equipment is more suited towards home theatre. pretty much every brand of amp i have heard sounds better then them, but also cost more. i didnt care for their preamp and my cambridge 840v2 integrated smokes their pre and upa-1 monoblock combo. if you are after sound quality i would look somewhere else, but if budget is tight or if its for theatre use then i would go with them.

Hi Oldmandave
I have there processor and five channel amp, couldn't be happier, as Rayray8 said great for home theater, that whats mine is solely for!Excellent built quality, looks great and yes great service.

Hi Oldmandave

I have an Emotiva UPA-7 amp paired with an Outlaw 990 HT Processor/Preamp. To me this is a really good combination that I'm very happy with. I had a Sony receiver/processor that was just a level below their ES line and I had a good improvement in sound even with the Emotiva UPA-7 hooked up to it before I got the Outlaw 990 Pre/Pro.

Emotiva has their niche and I believe it to be in the HT amplification area. The do have great customer service and the build quality on their stuff is solid. To me they were a like a gateway drug into this audio addiction I never new existed. For the price some of their stuff is hard to beat.

I'd also look at their ERC-1 CD player. Some say it can be a little bright in terms of sound but at it's price point it is very hard to beat. It is a quality piece all around.

I've been looking at the Emotiva UPA-1s for my first setup, but keep running across 'their good for HT setup'... what would a competitor in this 'mid-hi-fi' range be that caters towards musicality as opposed to theatre use?

My two channel system is Merlin TSM-MXr and Manley Stingray II tube amp....fairly pricey amp when you price it out by the watt!

But for my large home theater I have 3 Emotiva Amps and the UMC-1 proccessor. The amps replaced gear from Rotel and Parasound, but I also compared them to a modified Odyssey stratos. I've reviewed their stuff elsewhere, but let me just say that the Emotiva amps are amazing for their cost, especially when used in home theater systems.

Now...compared to my Manley tube amp the Emotiva XPA-2 suffers a big loss, especially in soundstaging, but then the Manley costs 10 times the price!

Also: I waited for the bugs to get worked out of the UMC-1 processor and it's been a fantastic unit. It's also superior to my Onkyo that also cost me 4 times more. So again...for HT use, very hard to beat the value of the Emotiva stuff.

Cheers,

Rob