Post by mysterymachine on May 2, 2010 19:41:12 GMT -5
I started to feel a little guilty with the posts since I got the UMC being ?s and problems. So after my first weekend with the new toy here is a high level +/-
Positives:
1. FLEXIBILITY of connections - it is great to have so many logical inputs that you can assign any mix of physical connections to. When I ordered I thought this was just a "thats cool" feature but its awesome. It makes things like 7.1 ext for sound and HDMI 1 for video work like a charm. With every previous processor I have used you basically had the video inputs and had to assign an audio with it so I could never have a single source (like the Oppo BDP-83) have inputs for 2 channel, 7.1 analog and hdmi (and you could do optical as well from it) all assigned to the same video. Also the flexibility of assigning the modes to the inputs for each type of signal is something I've never seen before in a processor and is a great feature. For example for 2 channel audio for cable I want to use the PLII but for the bluray when I get a 2 channel signal I want to use stereo. To do that in the UMC is simple and it works great.
2. Change on the fly audio settings. Things like 24/12db slope I had no idea what was best for my speakers + room. It was a lot of fun to tweak until it sounded exactly the way I liked it. For example the bass really tightened up in my room when I lowered the crossover on my FL/FR a little and then switched to 24 for the slope.. suddenly all the boomyness I had in my room dissappeared and the audio sounded great - better than its ever sounded before.
3. Sound quality. There are lots of reviews on this but I would just say its "articulate". Things where I had trouble understanding the dialog before now are clear. Its lively and powerful without being in your face. This is also my first case of seperates so that may play into it. I disliked the sound from the onkyo I was using before this (I would describe it as thin, tinny, flat). I really like the HK avr8000 I had prior to that but the UMC is clearer sounding (but not artificially like some audio units where they tweak the highs to make it sound clearer).
4. Lots of HDMI ins
5. Price!
6. Emotivas pace of fixing bugs. Hopefully they have the loss of audio fixed now (seems like it for me - I only have had a couple rare times since 6bv2 with audio drops) and then they will have more time to dig into more nitty gritty bugs.
Negatives:
1. For me the video is lacking. First let me say that pass through mode will not work for me and second I prior was using an iScan VP50 that even used I paid more for than the UMC so I might not be the best person to comment on video. The video is weird - for small details like texture its like the image is slightly blurry and out of focus, while hard lines (like text, or the outline of something) is over sharp - even with the sharpness turned down to 0 you can see its sharpening the edges. I suspect with a newer 1080P projector you don't have this issue and its probably even fine for people that can use passthrough but for some reason passthrough always errors for me. The issues are most pronounced on a 720p source (so no scaling.. 720p in to 720p out). Oddly enough 480i/p or 1080i/p source being scaled does not have as many sharpening issues but is still soft.
2. Small bugs (such as the weirdness I discovered with a 5.0 sacd having the bass not redirected to the sub at the crossover point, instead its just dropped). To be fair I can't think of any recent audio video receiver or processor that did not have some kinda of issues like this. Some of these things are really hard to test (for example I just happen to have a 5.0 SACD that made the issue obvious to me but I don't know that there is much of any source material that is 5.0).
3. The remote. Hear me out - I am fine with the cheap plastic remote BUT at least have the cheap plastic remote put out a decent signal. After setting up my UMC my finger hurt from mashing on the buttons so many times - seems the button press wouldn't be picked up by the UMC about 1/3 of the time. I will only use the remote for the setup but it made setup frustrating. A friend with the UMC said the exact same thing so I don't just have a bum remote.
4. EmoQ. It doesn't work well. Things like level and distance are easy to set so I don't care much that EMOQ gets those wrong. Idividual speaker EQs however are not easy to do by hand. I wish the UMC had a manual EQ test tone, like for level, that was at each one of the EQ frequency points so you could set the EQ per speaker easily with a sound meter.
5. "Ghosts in the machine". Most of the time the UMC works as expected. In fact in day to day watching I bet it works as intended 99% of the time but every once in a while weird things happen. I got this especially when running through the same AIX disc shown in Lonnies video. Sometimes a 5.1 signal would only have sound in the 2 or 3 speakers, a couple times the test signals were shifted over one (ie the center channel sound came out of the right front, right front came out right rear etc). A few times my Tuner would not work. There are just some little weird things that happen that you cannot reproduce.
For me the verdict is that the positives greatly outweigh the negatives and I am happy to have the UMC in my system. Once I can afford a 1080P display I think I will like it even more.
Positives:
1. FLEXIBILITY of connections - it is great to have so many logical inputs that you can assign any mix of physical connections to. When I ordered I thought this was just a "thats cool" feature but its awesome. It makes things like 7.1 ext for sound and HDMI 1 for video work like a charm. With every previous processor I have used you basically had the video inputs and had to assign an audio with it so I could never have a single source (like the Oppo BDP-83) have inputs for 2 channel, 7.1 analog and hdmi (and you could do optical as well from it) all assigned to the same video. Also the flexibility of assigning the modes to the inputs for each type of signal is something I've never seen before in a processor and is a great feature. For example for 2 channel audio for cable I want to use the PLII but for the bluray when I get a 2 channel signal I want to use stereo. To do that in the UMC is simple and it works great.
2. Change on the fly audio settings. Things like 24/12db slope I had no idea what was best for my speakers + room. It was a lot of fun to tweak until it sounded exactly the way I liked it. For example the bass really tightened up in my room when I lowered the crossover on my FL/FR a little and then switched to 24 for the slope.. suddenly all the boomyness I had in my room dissappeared and the audio sounded great - better than its ever sounded before.
3. Sound quality. There are lots of reviews on this but I would just say its "articulate". Things where I had trouble understanding the dialog before now are clear. Its lively and powerful without being in your face. This is also my first case of seperates so that may play into it. I disliked the sound from the onkyo I was using before this (I would describe it as thin, tinny, flat). I really like the HK avr8000 I had prior to that but the UMC is clearer sounding (but not artificially like some audio units where they tweak the highs to make it sound clearer).
4. Lots of HDMI ins
5. Price!
6. Emotivas pace of fixing bugs. Hopefully they have the loss of audio fixed now (seems like it for me - I only have had a couple rare times since 6bv2 with audio drops) and then they will have more time to dig into more nitty gritty bugs.
Negatives:
1. For me the video is lacking. First let me say that pass through mode will not work for me and second I prior was using an iScan VP50 that even used I paid more for than the UMC so I might not be the best person to comment on video. The video is weird - for small details like texture its like the image is slightly blurry and out of focus, while hard lines (like text, or the outline of something) is over sharp - even with the sharpness turned down to 0 you can see its sharpening the edges. I suspect with a newer 1080P projector you don't have this issue and its probably even fine for people that can use passthrough but for some reason passthrough always errors for me. The issues are most pronounced on a 720p source (so no scaling.. 720p in to 720p out). Oddly enough 480i/p or 1080i/p source being scaled does not have as many sharpening issues but is still soft.
2. Small bugs (such as the weirdness I discovered with a 5.0 sacd having the bass not redirected to the sub at the crossover point, instead its just dropped). To be fair I can't think of any recent audio video receiver or processor that did not have some kinda of issues like this. Some of these things are really hard to test (for example I just happen to have a 5.0 SACD that made the issue obvious to me but I don't know that there is much of any source material that is 5.0).
3. The remote. Hear me out - I am fine with the cheap plastic remote BUT at least have the cheap plastic remote put out a decent signal. After setting up my UMC my finger hurt from mashing on the buttons so many times - seems the button press wouldn't be picked up by the UMC about 1/3 of the time. I will only use the remote for the setup but it made setup frustrating. A friend with the UMC said the exact same thing so I don't just have a bum remote.
4. EmoQ. It doesn't work well. Things like level and distance are easy to set so I don't care much that EMOQ gets those wrong. Idividual speaker EQs however are not easy to do by hand. I wish the UMC had a manual EQ test tone, like for level, that was at each one of the EQ frequency points so you could set the EQ per speaker easily with a sound meter.
5. "Ghosts in the machine". Most of the time the UMC works as expected. In fact in day to day watching I bet it works as intended 99% of the time but every once in a while weird things happen. I got this especially when running through the same AIX disc shown in Lonnies video. Sometimes a 5.1 signal would only have sound in the 2 or 3 speakers, a couple times the test signals were shifted over one (ie the center channel sound came out of the right front, right front came out right rear etc). A few times my Tuner would not work. There are just some little weird things that happen that you cannot reproduce.
For me the verdict is that the positives greatly outweigh the negatives and I am happy to have the UMC in my system. Once I can afford a 1080P display I think I will like it even more.
