MC-700 FIRST IMPRESSIONS

[rbk123]

That will work. Or you can get a pair, and just use 1, with 1 to use later or as a spare. If the pair are bonded together you can easily pull them apart to have individual cables.

Another suggestion - if you have other audiophile friends, I would wager they have extra RCA's lying around that you could use. I know I have more than a few I could give to someone in need (if you ever come to the states). Most of us have far more cables than we actually need...

[leefdalucky]

Personally I like Monoprice's Monoliths.
They are excellent.
Anything more, for me, would be overkill.
I've tried a lot from the $200 range down to $5.
Even tried silver-coated copper at one point.
Monolith's are just fine.

www.monoprice.com/product?p_id=18534

[Ex_Vintage]

Jan 2, 2020 16:56:26 GMT -5 xzaq said:

Hello,

I wish to ask you about connecting emotiva mc-700 with a-700 amp.
Can I use this cable from Qed (https://www.avstore.ro/cabluri-audio/qed-performance-digital-audio-1m/)
to connect them?....so it will be 7 cables.

I can't find good single rca cables, just stereo - red and white- so can this qed coaxial do the job?

Sorry if I ask this in wrong section and if you can tell me about other cables that would work just fine I'll really appreciate it.

Thanks!

You can use it, but is probably overkill. The cables you list fare for SPDIF digital content. The connection from the MC to the A700 is low level analog. I would suggest some cables from Monoprice. 

[geoworldman]

Hi-I have been using the MC-700 for 1 week in my set-up (It shipped with firmware 3.1.3). Overall good equipment and value and relatively easy to use.  No complaints and would recommend if the below Problem is eventually rectified:

First, I used the Automated Emo-Q service and was pretty satisfied-and only did some minor bass management tweaking. I use a 2.1 speaker set-up. All HDMI cables are spec. 2.0a or b

Now onto the less-desirable traits:  
-HDMI 2.0 sources that use 2.2 CEC does not function properly. I use a Roku Stick and a 4K UHD Blu-Ray player.  When I go directly from the Roku or Blu-Ray to any of the HDMI 2.0 ("commercial 4K") inputs I either get no sound, no video or no both!  To solve I have to randomly turn off sources such as TV, Emotiva and/or disconnect-reconnect the HDMI cable from Roku. Anytime source material changes, example: one episode finishes and another episode begins of a series, either the audio, video or both are lost-and so we begin again. This is all accompanied by pops and clicks from the speakers.

 (NOTE-all works fine using the HDMI "non-commercial 4k" inputs, but I lose 4K video, of course).

I almost returned the unit, but finally decided to input all 4K sources to the TV (LG OLED CX series) and use the eARC/ARC for sound return back to the MC-700. Everything works fine now.

The Manual and literature, as well as the label on the MC-700 HDMI input is marked as only ARC. So I assume it does not support eARC bandwidth. 

This is not my desired set-up with HDMI sources, but for the quality/value relationship in a processor I can't beat it for under $1000.

Hope this Helps 

[budgetaudiophile]

I apparently bought one of these before they were discontinued. Perhaps someone in here can lend a hand (based on my first impression)?

I previously owned the UMC-1, which I thought sounded pretty darned good. It was open and detailed... until it died. I replaced it with the MC-700, expecting it to sound equally good, but it doesn't.

When I finally got around to critical listening (well after the return policy's 30 days), I noticed I was having trouble hearing dialogue. It didn't sound open and in front of the speaker, as it did with the UMC-1. In fact, all the sounds seem very much restricted to the speaker box, almost a bit compressed. It seems less dynamic, less detailed, and more closed.

Keep in mind that everything else in the system is identical. I set it up exactly the way I set up the UMC-1.

Thinking I may have messed something up, I went through the setup process again, paying very close attention to what I was doing. Same end result.

I'm a systems engineer, so I'm not confused with equipment manuals or following instructions. I didn't mess anything up (not much to mess up, really). I've been an A/V enthusiast for decades, so I'm not a newb or ignorant on how to set things up (and how they should sound). I know what I'm doing, and I know what I'm hearing. It's veiled, and not very encompassing. I don't detect any frequency fall-out, but do detect a bit of congestion. Speakers are fine (no blown tweeters anywhere).

When playing CDs through my Sony Blue-ray/SACD (not a cheap piece of junk, but only has HDMI out), the sound is congested and compressed (basically, awful), making me think the D/A conversion in the MC-700 is having issues (at least L/R).

This leaves me to believe something is wrong, yet everything works (with the exception of the HDMI handshake, which seems flaky - forcing a power recycle now and then to get the sound back). I guess my question, before calling support, is if there is any secret setting I'm missing? Should I kill the EMOQ setup (which I used with the UMC-1, and it was fine), and go full manual? Not really sure where to go with this. It's not "broke", but doesn't sound right, either.

All reviews (personal or otherwise) suggest it is a great sounding pre-pro. The UMC-1 was a great sounding pre-pro. This particular one is not. Just wondering if anyone else experienced anything similar, or better yet, has a solution.

[rbk123]

Feb 11, 2021 15:54:37 GMT -5 budgetaudiophile said:

Should I kill the EMOQ setup (which I used with the UMC-1, and it was fine), and go full manual?

Try it and report back; you can always turn EmoQ back on. I know others have had problems with EmoQ on this unit getting a different response each time they ran it.

[swedenevguru]

Feb 11, 2021 19:23:52 GMT -5 rbk123 said:

Feb 11, 2021 15:54:37 GMT -5 budgetaudiophile said:

Should I kill the EMOQ setup (which I used with the UMC-1, and it was fine), and go full manual?

Try it and report back; you can always turn EmoQ back on. I know others have had problems with EmoQ on this unit getting a different response each time they ran it.

EmoQ arent good on Mc700 have had this unit for 3 years atleast.

Setting it up with Rew are alot better and my subwoofer Settings are impossible with EmoQ so minidsp and Umik 1 are alot better.

Even avoid EmoQ and flat curve are better then with it enabled.

[budgetaudiophile]

Got better sound with manual settings, but I think it still needs some tweaking. Passable for movies, now, but still doesn't seem as open as the UMC-1 was. I wonder why EMOQ doesn't work as well on the newer processor, it worked fine on the UMC-1 (at least on mine, YMMV).

[cliffwells]

I received my MC-700 and 2-channel XPA-2 Gen3 back in September 2021. Here's my overall impressions, both good and bad.

The Good:

1) Sound quality. Really good. I have a pair of Cambridge Soundworks Tower II's and this system breathed new life into them. Really, really enjoyable.

2) Price. Hard to beat.


The Bad:

1) Blue lights are obnoxious. I don't know where most people put their stereo equipment, but mine sits directly below the TV and the blue lights are horrible. I ended up putting black tape over much of the front so that we could watch movies, instead of commenting on how obnoxious these lights are. This is such a poor design decision that it would be a deal-breaker were it not for the aforementioned upsides (and black tape).

2) Front display is impossible to read without leaning forward and squinting. Despite being intensely bright, the blue light makes it difficult to read the actual words and numbers on the display. There's a known reason for this: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Purkinje_effect. Emotiva needs to hire a UX person.

3) Most of the HDMI ports are useless since they don't support 4k HDR/DolbyVision. I attach devices to my TV directly and use HDMI-ARC for audio. Would have been better to simply omit them and save some money to improve the other aspects of the system.

4) The setup software is clunky. So clunky.

5) The firmware is unstable and will sometimes simply not play anything from any input (HDMI or analog) for no reason whatsoever and there's no way to fix it yourself. Usually it recovers on its own after some random amount of time, but once I tried a factory-reset and that worked as well (although massively inconvenient).


6) EmoQ microphone port on the back is stupidly difficult to access once you have the system installed. Please put this stuff on the front. Chances that a user will want to move/replace speakers (or have to re-run it due to problem 5) makes this a larger issue than it might seem.

As much as I love the sound of this system, the frustrating workarounds for poor firmware and design have convinced me to look for a different product. I would consider another Emotiva product, but most of them look like they'd take an entire roll of tape to make visually acceptable.


Update 06/24/2022: 

Today the menu would no longer display (screen just stays black). I used the power button on the remote to turn the MC-700 off/on again and now am once again without any audio (although it did restore the setup menu). I suppose the next step is to downgrade the firmware to see if this happens with older firmware. After that I guess I'll have to RMA the thing. Too bad.