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Post by Percussionista on Jan 22, 2017 19:51:06 GMT -5
Anyone have any thoughts on why a PC, with a Nvidia 970 GPU that has HDMI 2.0 (unknown HDCP, but not 2.2), does not seem to work on the HDMI-ins 4-6 and yet works on the more stringent inputs 1-3? I thought 4-6 were for "non-commercial" 4K sources (e.g.). The HDCP level of the GPU and the HDMI-in4-6's are sub-HDCP2.2, though the TV is 2.2. The TV is saying it doesn't see any input, not that it is rejecting the input. This might imply the 700 is not passing signal through. I have a GTX 960 and it is HDMI 2.0 and HDCP 2.2 compliant. I know the GTX 980 is also compliant, but I can't find any definitive information regarding the GTX 970. keep in mind your main board chipset also plays a role in this. Quote below is from a Tom's Hardware Review: What brand 970 and brand and model main board are you using? Interesting the latter doing an internal conversion to generate HDCP 2.2. In a much older system I had a GPU that had an AMD chipset for the PC-Express-plus bus but that was back-engineered to run on older PC-Express buses (as was the case of that older machine). First, the 980's are not HDCP 2.2 compliant, nor is the 970. They were the first of the 9-series GPU's and are at a lower HDCP level (I keep trying to pin this down but can't find the actual level). Later released 9 series GPU's, starting with the 960, and then the 950, were HDCP 2.2 compliant. My 970 is one of the basic superclocked models from EVGA (970 SC). I installed it in a 4-5 year old Digital Storm machine that I have more recently upgraded a bit, and use it now as a gaming system. I'm sorry but I don't know who is the manufacturer of the main board, but it is well before the HDCP 2.2 era. The CPU is a i7-2600K, Sandy Bridge. I do have a newer machine from Digital Storm in which I put an EVGA 950-FTW, which I use for all general purpose use, including music listening, but I do not run this through the surround system. This has a i7-6700 CPU, and either a Gigabyte or Asus motherboard. Both PCs go to my display (Sony 4K TV), the 950 directly connected, the 970 through the MC700. What I haven't tried, suggested by rbk123, is to reboot the 970 machine after connecting it to the MC700's HDMI-in-4, and see if that causes the handshake to wake everybody up. Ditto reboot the MC700 too.  It's still quite unclear to me what can be connected to the ins4-6, and/or what tricks I need to do to make it work (though I will try the reboot while connected trick). I see at least one other poster who has also successfully connected a HTPC there. |
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Post by harlan on Jan 22, 2017 20:00:45 GMT -5
I'll recheck my XMC-1 again, but have not really noticed a loss of first Second or less of audio on any of my music playing devices. For those who can't stand this issue, you may want to Give Emotiva a call. They don't always follow these threads. Maybe they can fix it in a firmware update. Maybe they should start following these threads if they dont. |
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Post by bumpytrail on Jan 22, 2017 20:33:08 GMT -5
Anyone have any thoughts on why a PC, with a Nvidia 970 GPU that has HDMI 2.0 (unknown HDCP, but not 2.2), does not seem to work on the HDMI-ins 4-6 and yet works on the more stringent inputs 1-3? I thought 4-6 were for "non-commercial" 4K sources (e.g.). The HDCP level of the GPU and the HDMI-in4-6's are sub-HDCP2.2, though the TV is 2.2. The TV is saying it doesn't see any input, not that it is rejecting the input. This might imply the 700 is not passing signal through. ==================================== Don't know if this will help but I'm running a Windows 10 Intel i7 HTPC with a Nvidia GTX 960 video card outputting a 4K resolution (3840 x 2160 native) into the HDMI 1 input of the MC-700 and out the HDMI 1 output to a Vizio TV, works perfect. I do know from past trial and error that I have to follow a strict turn on procedure in this order to get video: 1) Turn on the TV and select the correct input. 2) Turn on the MC-700 and select the correct input. 3) Turn on HTPC. If I switch inputs or outputs on any of the devices after all devices are up and running, I will most times loose the video and can't get it back with out powering everything down and restarting everything in the proper order. One other thing that drove me nuts getting my HTPC up and working, were some bad/intermittent/flaky HDMI cables. Once I identified and threw out the bad HDMI cables, everything has been very stable since. Hope this helps. |
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Post by sydhaynes on Jan 22, 2017 20:50:25 GMT -5
I see at least one other poster who has also successfully connected a HTPC there. I'm am currently connected via HDMI4 with my laptop, although it's not @ 4K. I'm using an Nvidia GeForce 840M GPU. |
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hemster
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Post by hemster on Jan 22, 2017 21:05:57 GMT -5
I'll recheck my XMC-1 again, but have not really noticed a loss of first Second or less of audio on any of my music playing devices. For those who can't stand this issue, you may want to Give Emotiva a call. They don't always follow these threads. Maybe they can fix it in a firmware update. Maybe they should start following these threads if they dont. How much extra would it cost us if they employed staff to follow all the threads? Will people who don't have the problem be willing to pay? |
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Post by foggy1956 on Jan 22, 2017 21:15:32 GMT -5
Maybe they should start following these threads if they dont. How much extra would it cost us if they employed staff to follow all the threads? Will people who don't have the problem be willing to pay? Betting Keith, Dan, and the boys are well aware of these threads |
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Post by harlan on Jan 22, 2017 21:38:57 GMT -5
Maybe they should start following these threads if they dont. How much extra would it cost us if they employed staff to follow all the threads? Will people who don't have the problem be willing to pay? Lol.....they saved a lot of money by using us as Beta testers. There are a lot of apologists here. I spent a large portion of my life in product development. We would never have released a product for production with this many issues.....never. I bought this unit specifically because it advertised 4k switching. Guess how my cable box and 4k dvd player are hooked up? Yup direct to the TV bypassing the MC700 because there isnt any audio. I purchased the bluetooth module so that I could use my tablet as a music server.......yup it unpairs after a few moments making it useless. |
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Post by avalon on Jan 22, 2017 21:46:09 GMT -5
Agreed MC-700 is slow to re-lock on 2 channel PCM over Toslink when my ERC-3 goes on to next track. It should be easy for Emo to duplicate given it happens with their own CD player... Thank you for confirming I'm not crazy - and that the problem even effects Emotiva's own CD player. The ability to play PCM audio over S/PDIF or Toslink is CORE functionality of any preamp. Otherwise why even put digital inputs on the unit? Its unimaginable to me that MC700 shipped with this problem. Alas, after much re-reading of threads I'm increasingly concerned that this is not a firmware fixable problem as it appears to be associated with the Cirrus chipset. From Doc1963 regarding the UMC-200:No worries... but I doubt that the UMC-200 will ever deal with the delayed audio lock better than it already does.
The issue lies within the Cirrus chipset and how it "drops" the decoder setting too quickly and then doesn't recover quickly enough. Unfortunately, firmware cannot fully compensate for that. The TI (Texas Instruments) DSP chipsets do a much better job and (maybe) they're likely what you had in your previous AVR.And from Dan Laufman:The MC-700 uses a pair of Cirrus dual core 32 bit processors for decoding and post processing. At this point all I can do is sit back and wait and see how Emotiva responds over the next couple of weeks. As for now I consider the MC700 unusable for stereo music listening - which is its primary purpose in my situation. It may sound great but what does that matter if it truncates the source material? I will say it looks great in my rack and I love the small footprint. Wish it worked though.  |
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Post by rbk123 on Jan 22, 2017 22:00:08 GMT -5
Lol.....they saved a lot of money by using us as Beta testers. There are a lot of apologists here. I spent a large portion of my life in product development. We would never have released a product for production with this many issues.....never. Agree. I am surprised that it is so problematic considering how solid the XMC's HDMI is. I would have thought those learnings would have carried over. My MC700 gets as easily confused with the DirecTV box as my UMC-1 did. They both work, but frequently it takes multiple attempts before success. I am fortunate I can workaround it's troubles with my setup and can enjoy it's strengths, though. |
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Post by Jim on Jan 22, 2017 22:44:31 GMT -5
How much extra would it cost us if they employed staff to follow all the threads? Will people who don't have the problem be willing to pay? Lol.....they saved a lot of money by using us as Beta testers. There are a lot of apologists here. I spent a large portion of my life in product development. We would never have released a product for production with this many issues.....never. I bought this unit specifically because it advertised 4k switching. Guess how my cable box and 4k dvd player are hooked up? Yup direct to the TV bypassing the MC700 because there isnt any audio. I purchased the bluetooth module so that I could use my tablet as a music server.......yup it unpairs after a few moments making it useless. Have you spent any time doing product development for receivers / processors? |
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Post by harlan on Jan 22, 2017 23:04:13 GMT -5
Lol.....they saved a lot of money by using us as Beta testers. There are a lot of apologists here. I spent a large portion of my life in product development. We would never have released a product for production with this many issues.....never. I bought this unit specifically because it advertised 4k switching. Guess how my cable box and 4k dvd player are hooked up? Yup direct to the TV bypassing the MC700 because there isnt any audio. I purchased the bluetooth module so that I could use my tablet as a music server.......yup it unpairs after a few moments making it useless. Have you spent any time doing product development for receivers / processors? I will answer your question but first I want to ask what difference does that make? A product has been properly vetted and ready for sale or its not. A manufacturer should not release it for production until it has been thoroughly tested. I have not done product development for receivers or processors. I have however done it for considerably more complex products when I worked for GE Aerospace. I have also done it for less complex products but much in higher volumes when I worked for Hamilton Beach Proctor Silex. So yes, I feel very qualified to comment as I did. |
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Post by Jim on Jan 22, 2017 23:24:49 GMT -5
Hey.. I was just curious.
No need to get all defensive....
BTW, have you also spent time doing research to determine the best way to identify apologists? I mean, do you assign a probability? Is there a margin of error?
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hemster
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Post by hemster on Jan 23, 2017 0:10:05 GMT -5
Hey.. I was just curious. No need to get all defensive.... BTW, have you also spent time doing research to determine the best way to identify apologists? I mean, do you assign a probability? Is there a margin of error? Can one discern an apologist in a DBT? |
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Post by doc1963 on Jan 23, 2017 1:47:19 GMT -5
Wow… it seems like we’ve been down this road before. Yes, I’ve owned both the UMC-1 and the UMC-200. They both had “issues” upon their initial releases, but most of the issues that “could” be fixed eventually were. A lot of what I’m reading here (and elsewhere) is firmware related and I’m sure that it can be quickly resolved. So, hang in there. As for the DSP mute timing, this problem is a bit more complex as it involves both the DSP and the source material being presented to it. Absolute digital silence is the cause of this issue and is very much source dependent. For this reason, you will NOT encounter this problem on some CDs (or rips), but will on others. It’s all about how the source was mastered and how your DSP handles digital silence if the mastering was not dithered. Absolute digital silence is not your friend... dithered silence is. The DSP will mute when absolute silence is detected (it doesn’t know the difference between the silence between tracks or the “true” end of a data stream) and will remain muted until new program material is received. In an instant, the DSP must determine what type of encoding is being received, apply the correct decoding and lift the mute. Timing here is critical. If the mute timing is set too fat, you will loose the first millisecond of audio. If the timing is set too lean, you will be subject to all sorts of pops, tics and unwanted noise caused by track changes and/or DSP mode changes. The wrong choice either way leads to an unhappy end user. For whatever reason, these Cirrus chipsets are (or seem to be) slower than some others to open, therefore the problem with “chopped” audio will never fully be resolved for “all” source material. The problem for you (as the end user) is once you hear “chopped” lead-in audio, and know it’s there, you cannot “un-hear” it no matter how much better they are able to make it. Although the XMC-1 uses an entirely different DSP chipset, the “digital silence” issue is still repeatable on that platform as well. However, the XMC-1’s response time is much faster and, as a result, it quite often goes unnoticed. Likewise, I’m quite willing to bet that, if you know exactly what you’re listening for, you will find that the same issue exists in many processors (to a greater or lesser extent) that don’t bear Emotiva’s name. They're not alone. If you use a PC or Mac running a software based music server like JRiver, Audirvana or Amara, then you’re in luck. There’s an easy solution. Simply double the sampling rate. Almost all subsampling routines will “dither” (just as the mastering engineer should have done) and, as a result, there will be no “absolute” digital silence in the data and your muting issue will vanish. If you use a Squeezebox, there isn’t an “easy” answer, but there is one if you dare to try it. If you have access to an audio editor like Audacity (which I believe is still free to download) or Adobe Audition, pull one of your troublesome files into the software doing nothing more than re-exporting it with “shaped dithering” applied. Pull that file back into Squeezebox Server and play it. Your muting issue should also have vanished. For those of you who have hardware devices (like a CD player) connected via SPDIF and are experiencing this issue, there isn’t an easy solution for you other than using an analog input or waiting to see just how much of an improvement Emotiva can make. While it may seem unimaginable to some that a processor can, and obviously was, released with some bugs and issues, think about it this way... Oppo just released their new flagship 4K UHD Blu-ray player with what would seem to be some pretty ugly flaws. I know this because I own one. However, the fact is that of these issues, only some affect all users equally while most do not. For me, it doesn't matter. I trust (and know) that Oppo will get it right. Likewise, you will either have to put your faith in Emotiva or not. You have 30 days to decide. Even with a pre-release multi-stage beta program in place, such as Oppo's, some problems still sneak out the door. Why...  Because us early adopters are the last level of beta testing, like it or not... |
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Post by beardedalbatross on Jan 23, 2017 4:36:30 GMT -5
Dan and Lonnie stated that the ship date was held back to put these through stringent QC tests. I just don't understand how there are so many dang bugs. Surely they knew they were there if they ran tests. You've already delayed the product so just release it when it's actually ready.
The way they've done it is kinda scummy in that some people may feel pressured to hold on to the product and hope for the best since they got it during the sale period. If the bugs get fixed then hey I'll be out on return shipping costs + the extra $100 to rebuy.
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cawgijoe
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Post by cawgijoe on Jan 23, 2017 7:29:59 GMT -5
How much extra would it cost us if they employed staff to follow all the threads? Will people who don't have the problem be willing to pay? Betting Keith, Dan, and the boys are well aware of these threads I'm sure they are, but they don't spend all day perusing them. If you have a problem, pick up the phone and call. Why is that so hard? |
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Post by pmctexas on Jan 23, 2017 7:55:22 GMT -5
Lonnie responded to my e-mail to emo support listing my MC700 issues... It's easy to shoot them an email outlining concerns - perhaps it will help them find a pattern. I suggest Emo needs to find a few folks to use the new products before mass shipment - but that goes against everyone wanting product ASAP. I thought they had secret beta testers before.
I discussed the subwoofer S10/S12 noise problem with them at CES and they confirmed it with the S12 at the show and generally seemed surprised about it...
These experiences have now deterred me from being in the "first batch" anymore..
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Post by harlan on Jan 23, 2017 8:10:05 GMT -5
Hey.. I was just curious. No need to get all defensive.... BTW, have you also spent time doing research to determine the best way to identify apologists? I mean, do you assign a probability? Is there a margin of error? Actually it's intuitively obvious to the most casual observer as they invariably "out" themselves. Speaking of defensive......... |
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cawgijoe
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Post by cawgijoe on Jan 23, 2017 8:16:06 GMT -5
Lonnie responded to my e-mail to emo support listing my MC700 issues... It's easy to shoot them an email outlining concerns - perhaps it will help them find a pattern. I suggest Emo needs to find a few folks to use the new products before mass shipment - but that goes against everyone wanting product ASAP. I thought they had secret beta testers before. I discussed the subwoofer S10/S12 noise problem with them at CES and they confirmed it with the S12 at the show and generally seemed surprised about it... These experiences have now deterred me from being in the "first batch" anymore.. I usually hate to be in the "first batch" on any new product and that especially includes newly redesigned cars. Unfortunately it takes patience which many of us do not have. Did you get anything specific from Lonnie that you can share? |
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Post by harlan on Jan 23, 2017 8:24:50 GMT -5
Betting Keith, Dan, and the boys are well aware of these threads I'm sure they are, but they don't spend all day perusing them. If you have a problem, pick up the phone and call. Why is that so hard? Yes we can call and since its no longer the weekend we will. I do believe however that it would be way more efficient for Emo to answer questions here. They have a focus group with multiple people experiencing the same issues. They could respond to 15 people here in parallel or take the time to answer 15 separate inquiries in series. |
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It's still quite unclear to me what can be connected to the ins4-6, and/or what tricks I need to do to make it work (though I will try the reboot while connected trick). I see at least one other poster who has also successfully connected a HTPC there.
Because us early adopters are the last level of beta testing, like it or not... 