What makes a "premium" processor?

[Erwin.BE]

Some owners of the RS20i use 14 channels as an active crossover for the 7 main speakers and use the other two for the subs.

I suggest people who want no more than 7.x stick to the XMC-1. If all channels of the RMC-1 would be fully balanced, the inherent double structure would be 16 channel (8 "cold" and 8 "hot").

[antoninus9]

I'm not so much an audiophile as a 'music-phile', and being able to listen to a wide variety of music from different periods is VERY important to me. (I realize that this may put me in the minority.) Some music is recorded and equalized very poorly. Tomlinson Holman designed the APT Holman preamplifier to correct for many of these issues easily. Because of this it was my all-time favorite preamplifier for many years. When Hughes first developed SRS it was yet another advancement in the right direction for easily dealing with poor source material. Microsoft includes a version of this for free with their Media Player.

I prefer the Direct Mode for listening to good recordings, but wish blend to mono (from APT) and SRS were quick switch options on the Emotiva. Blend to mono is great when you have old stereo recordings where the bass guitar is in one speaker and the lead in another (Beatles recordings come to mind) because you can blend the two into a descent an image. SRS is great for pulling out the details of poorly recorded music.

In my opinion too many audiophiles find themselves choosing music based on sound quality because some of their favorite music sounds terrible on a high end system. Any "premium" preamp/processor would have to address this problem, and restore the music people truly love and enjoy.

[KeithL]

I agree with your statement of the issues - but my solution is the exact opposite.

There is a lot of truly excellent restoration software available today - and the capabilities far exceed anything you can get in a preamp or pre/pro.

I have a high-end system, which uses a DAC, and which I normally use to play music from a hard drive (I am currently finishing up ripping ALL my CDs to hard drive). Once you "make the switch", it's trivial to use software to repair or adjust any recordings you have that need it. Unlike with an equalizer or preamp, after you get a recording just the way you like it, you can save the "fixed" copy and simply play that the next time. (If you like, you can save the original, plus any number of trial copies with various corrections applied.) If we're talking vinyl or tape, you'll have to convert it to digital first - which you would have to do anyway if you want to play it from the same system. This is just one more advantage to doing things digitally (add it to the fact that you can fit 5000 of your favorite albums on a $150 device that fits in your pocket, at perfect CD-or-better quality if you do it right, and that you can make a duplicate backup copy of all of them with a few key clicks).

Even a simple editing program like Adobe Audition can make adjustments that even studios barely dreamed of a few years ago, and advanced programs like Izotope Rx and SpectraLayers go way beyond that. Any combination of restoration options that could conceivably be included in a preamp or pre/pro would be trivial compared to what you can get from even a free audio editing program. (And, again, once the recording is properly fixed, it will sound good on any high quality system you play it on....)

(Personally, I find that SRSC is somewhat intrusive - it makes lots of changes eve though some of them may sometimes be pleasing... But, if you like it, SRS IS a pushbutton option - on a computer player.)

The solution is easy - if your favorite music sounds bad on your high end system - then fix the music (if possible).

Jan 14, 2014 12:30:30 GMT -5 antoninus9 said:

I'm not so much an audiophile as a 'music-phile', and being able to listen to a wide variety of music from different periods is VERY important to me. (I realize that this may put me in the minority.) Some music is recorded and equalized very poorly. Tomlinson Holman designed the APT Holman preamplifier to correct for many of these issues easily. Because of this it was my all-time favorite preamplifier for many years. When Hughes first developed SRS it was yet another advancement in the right direction for easily dealing with poor source material. Microsoft includes a version of this for free with their Media Player.

I prefer the Direct Mode for listening to good recordings, but wish blend to mono (from APT) and SRS were quick switch options on the Emotiva. Blend to mono is great when you have old stereo recordings where the bass guitar is in one speaker and the lead in another (Beatles recordings come to mind) because you can blend the two into a descent an image. SRS is great for pulling out the details of poorly recorded music.

In my opinion too many audiophiles find themselves choosing music based on sound quality because some of their favorite music sounds terrible on a high end system. Any "premium" preamp/processor would have to address this problem, and restore the music people truly love and enjoy.

[antoninus9]

I'm a little ahead of you on conversion. I converted all my CDs, reel tapes and vinyl several years ago, and continue to do the same with all the new material I add. I agree that the software solutions are better than push button fixes that could be integrated via DSP into a preamp/processor. (I've taken the time to do that for my favorites.) I also agree that SRS is less than ideal. This, however, leaves about 16,000 FLAC files untouched. Hmmmm? What to do? Spend the rest of my life fixing them or, when needed, bring up Windows Media Player and click on SRS or maybe bring the old APT back into the circuit for a quick variable blend to mono? Why shouldn't a premium preamp/processor do that for me?

Your solution is indeed the best way but not the most practical or realistic with large music collections. It appears to me that many, if not most, audiophiles have large music collections. Based on that it seems reasonable that one click solutions may prove to be quite popular. To me the whole purpose of a premium unit is convenience and ease of use. Isn't that what DIRAC is doing? I could achieve better results than DIRAC can provide by doing everything manually, but DIRAC sure makes everything much easier. If it makes my life easier and my AV experience more enjoyable I'll love it and the company that built it. (APT Holman comes to mind as an example. I'm talking about something built 30 years ago because I enjoyed it so much.) What Emotiva product will be discussed 30 years from now? The devil is always in the details. In the end it's usually the attention paid to small details that defines excellence in design and execution.

In this I'm not trying to be critical of Emotiva in any way, but to push design considerations out of the box of that which is common and ubiquitous.

[thepcguy]

I 'downgraded' from the UMC-1 to the LMC-1 (bought it thru Craigslist for $100).

Obsolescence is part of marketing I suppose.

I mated the LMC-1 with an OPPO thru it's 7.1 analog. And the OPPO solved the HDMI problems.