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Post by marcl on Sept 9, 2021 15:46:43 GMT -5
Hi Lonnie, As a very long time Emotiva customer, I appreciate all the work you and your team put into providing some of the best HiFi gear at very competive prices. As a devoted vinylphile, I am also grateful for the Balanced XLR input and Reference Stereo mode on my XMC-2. I think it would be cool and help others gain confidence if you or your team could take a look at a few of ASR's processor/AVR review tests and try to recreate them with the XMC-2. I know this would be a lot of work. But, you could then send the exact XMC-2 to Amir @asr and he could perform the exact tests. If you both achieve the same results, then you would doing the Scientific method by independently replcating the results. The downside would be if the results continue to diverge. I do appreciate you posting the XMC-2 PDF AP plot which to my eyes look exceptionally good. Thanks. Agree with you. I am an Emotiva customer too and let’s face it most of us visit all these websites. you can easily see that from the posts. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Not shove it under the carpet. I believe in the good faith of both ASR and Emotiva. I don’t buy the agenda stuff. I don’t think ASR has a business interest. No conflict of interest. Let’s compare similar tests with parameters and units the same. Simple! This isn’t going away so better get it done. Do we as owners need to send another XMC-2 to ASR! Or can we simply come together and get to the bottom of this to everybody satisfaction! Agreed, and ... I encourage folks to watch the interview with Amir that I posted. He's a guy with lots of technical chops who was head of multiple development groups. So now he does this testing because he likes to do it. His agenda is to be as fair as he can be. Now sometimes people disagree with his methods (i.e. his Magnepan LRS review), but with respect to the electronics he sure has been doing this long enough to be consistent. |
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Post by sal1950 on Sept 9, 2021 15:52:46 GMT -5
I think Emotiva shouldn’t defend anything. If you don’t like the numbers posted by an agenda driven website, don’t buy the product. If you care about how it sounds buy it and have a listen. If you don’t like how it sounds, return it. Simple as that Not sure if Amir is really "agenda driven" but otherwise I agree with you. If you like a product then what difference do the numbers make? How many of us know all the specs for our cars? The likely answer would be not many, and to add to that, "I don't need to know the specs, I just like driving it." Or, "It does the job." So if that is the case with your car, then what is the deal with your audio gear? What if you have a car whose top speed is supposed to be 140 mph but some magazine or web site says it could only do 135 mph? Do you even drive that fast anyway?  All depends on what you bought that car for. If it's just a commuter to take you back and forth to work, the numbers might have little importance outside miles per gallon and average maintenance costs. Now if you bought a High Performance car, your probably going to want to know about its performance in minuet detail, and these details ARE going to matter to you. Acceleration, braking, skid pad numbers, 0-60, 0-100, top speed are all extremely important to that owner. Just ask the guy that takes his car to race on track days on the weekends, like us listening at night with the lights off to the best recordings we can find, we share a passion. So we buy the best performance we can afford.
We don't buy expensive processors because we don't care about performance or getting "the best" for our dollar, for that there are $299 receivers on Amazon.
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Post by goodfellas27 on Sept 9, 2021 15:58:51 GMT -5
Amir had worked with Emotiva before on the RMC-1 SSP before firmware 1.9, leading the firmware 1.9 fixes. Amir also sends his test results if the manufacture asks for them. SINAD is THD+N, and it's nothing mysterious as implied. Why not send Amir working XMC-2/RMC-1 units for testing? That would be an excellent external 3rd party test with nothing to gain. Other manufacturers would address the issues Amir finds with his testing methods. Lonnie appears to cherry-pick the numbers that worked for him under the -20db pretense. Lonnie -- why not address this with Amir himself since you don't have time to recreate the test? Your team has done so already with the RMC-1! Please don't get me wrong. I appreciate Lonnie and the team trying to address this, but not even bothering to recreate the same conditions noted in Amir test is worthless to me. I feel like we are trying to hide something here, or it's just me. Hi Lonnie, As a very long time Emotiva customer, I appreciate all the work you and your team put into providing some of the best HiFi gear at very competive prices. As a devoted vinylphile, I am also grateful for the Balanced XLR input and Reference Stereo mode on my XMC-2. I think it would be cool and help others gain confidence if you or your team could take a look at a few of ASR's processor/AVR review tests and try to recreate them with the XMC-2. I know this would be a lot of work. But, you could then send the exact XMC-2 to Amir @asr and he could perform the exact tests. If you both achieve the same results, then you would be doing the Scientific method by independently replicating the results. The downside would be if the results continue to diverge. I do appreciate you posting the XMC-2 PDF AP plot which to my eyes look exceptionally good. Thanks. |
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Post by donh50 on Sept 9, 2021 16:09:05 GMT -5
As many others have said, the issue here is figuring out why the XMC-2 performed poorly relative to the RMC-1. Call it academic interest on my part. In one of your previous posts in this thread, you asked about the differences in firmware, RMC-1(v1.9), compared to Amir's testing of the XMC-2(v2.3), you also mentioned that v2.3 has a known bass management boost bug. Could this have been the differences in the two different bench tests? I 've lost track of all the differences.  But it looks like a couple of things are happening: 1. The distortion is different, and worse than, Amir's previous RMC-1 measurements. Lonnie's results show them to be the same, so something is going on, I certainly do not know what. I have not been able to download the PDFs yet. From what I have read, the overall THD+N/SINAD performance is similar now, but lower than Amir's previous RMC-1 measurements. 2. Amir's results show a rising LF noise floor and that is what I have speculated (important word!) could be due to the bass management bug. If the summation is not handled properly that will raise the noise floor along with the signal levels (though I would expect a different slope assuming the noise is uncorrelated to the signals -- the signal would rise faster than the noise). That may not cause the distortion, though if levels were boosted internally at higher frequencies could be why THD is higher. There is also the strange phase offset Amir saw, leading to speculation that the unit he tested was defective. Other companies have not had problems recreating Amir's results but I am not sure, despite all the cross-attacks, if there is a setup issue or not. If the actual distortion performance is the same in both of Lonnie's tests, then it would be good if he could help Amir figure out why the discrepancy. Their previous RMC-1 results matched Amir's IIRC. If Lonnie's latest results show the RMC-1 and XMC-2 are identical, but lower than before, the question is "why lower?" and it is in Emotiva's court. I think Lonnie mentioned it may be a signal level difference? I am used to seeing tests at near full-scale (0 dBFS) instead of -20 dBFS so that could explain the distortion differences. But I think Amir said he tested the RMC-1 and XMC-1 identically -- that would be up to him to double(sanity)-check. Lots of back-and-forth and I have not been following closely (have to work sometime). This is all my off-the-cuff babbling since I did not do any of the tests and am not privy to their setups and methodologies. I am just an interested observer. I do have a technical background, including several decades of designing data converters (at the transistor level) and involvement with the IEEE Standards committee for testing them, so feel I have some competence in the field despite what Keith thinks.  (Keith and I have spoken a few times through the years, though he would not remember, and I like the guy FWIW. Except for the XMC-1 HDMI board mess I lived through with everyone else, my personal experience with Emotiva's products and support has been very positive.) I'll check out Lonnie's results when I get home and can pull the files. Getting blindsided by unexpectedly poor results from a customer/reviewer (more or less) is never fun so I understand the pushback. FWIWFM - Don |
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Post by louron on Sept 9, 2021 16:18:38 GMT -5
Amir had worked with Emotiva before on the RMC-1 SSP before firmware 1.9, leading the firmware 1.9 fixes. Amir also sends his test results if the manufacture asks for them. SINAD is THD+N, and it's nothing mysterious as implied. Why not send Amir working XMC-2/RMC-1 units for testing? That would be an excellent external 3rd party test with nothing to gain. Other manufacturers would address the issues Amir finds with his testing methods. Lonnie appears to cherry-pick the numbers that worked for him under the -20db pretense. Lonnie -- why not address this with Amir himself since you don't have time to recreate the test? Your team has done so already with the RMC-1! Please don't get me wrong. I appreciate Lonnie and the team trying to address this, but not even bothering to recreate the same conditions noted in Amir test is worthless to me. I feel like we are trying to hide something here, or it's just me. Hi Lonnie, As a very long time Emotiva customer, I appreciate all the work you and your team put into providing some of the best HiFi gear at very competive prices. As a devoted vinylphile, I am also grateful for the Balanced XLR input and Reference Stereo mode on my XMC-2. I think it would be cool and help others gain confidence if you or your team could take a look at a few of ASR's processor/AVR review tests and try to recreate them with the XMC-2. I know this would be a lot of work. But, you could then send the exact XMC-2 to Amir @asr and he could perform the exact tests. If you both achieve the same results, then you would be doing the Scientific method by independently replicating the results. The downside would be if the results continue to diverge. I do appreciate you posting the XMC-2 PDF AP plot which to my eyes look exceptionally good. Thanks. I think it is the way most of us think. We totally agree with you. And l8ke I said this isn’t going away anytime soon. I also appreciate the team at Emotiva. I want the truth. I can change the input level of my devices. I just checked each and everyone of them and when RCA they all state: 2 +/- 0.3 V (1 kHz, 0 dB). I am now checking for the XLR but that is inline with 2 V for RCA and 4 V for XLR that we often see. i want my XMC-2 tested just like the RMC-1 that performed so well( and should be recommended by Amir -) ). We are getting pretty close to unanimity. |
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Post by brutiarti on Sept 9, 2021 16:20:37 GMT -5
Hi Lonnie, As a very long time Emotiva customer, I appreciate all the work you and your team put into providing some of the best HiFi gear at very competive prices. As a devoted vinylphile, I am also grateful for the Balanced XLR input and Reference Stereo mode on my XMC-2. I think it would be cool and help others gain confidence if you or your team could take a look at a few of ASR's processor/AVR review tests and try to recreate them with the XMC-2. I know this would be a lot of work. But, you could then send the exact XMC-2 to Amir @asr and he could perform the exact tests. If you both achieve the same results, then you would doing the Scientific method by independently replcating the results. The downside would be if the results continue to diverge. I do appreciate you posting the XMC-2 PDF AP plot which to my eyes look exceptionally good. Thanks. Agree with you. I am an Emotiva customer too and let’s face it most of us visit all these websites. you can easily see that from the posts. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Not shove it under the carpet. I believe in the good faith of both ASR and Emotiva. I don’t buy the agenda stuff. I don’t think ASR has a business interest. No conflict of interest. Let’s compare similar tests with parameters and units the same. Simple! This isn’t going away so better get it done. Do we as owners need to send another XMC-2 to ASR! Or can we simply come together and get to the bottom of this to everybody satisfaction! I see it different. Asr keeps measuring chinese products and giving them glowing reviews and now suddenly everyone is getting those products. He is supposed to expose the snake oil products but I only see him measuring old amps, old dacs and discontinued products from the companies that charge a lot. Just check the review and detailed measurements of a 20 year old amplifier from Audio Research. And all the comments from their zombie followers trashing the company. |
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Lonnie
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Post by Lonnie on Sept 9, 2021 16:25:59 GMT -5
Gentleman, Let me preface the following comments by stating I'm not attacking anyone here or on the other site.I'm going to try and state the facts as I see them in hopes that it will answer your questions. As I have said before, I can't answer anything in regards to Amir's test. You should ask him directly. We tried to set up our system to as closely match what he did as possible and that produced the -85db down harmonics but this is not a real world scenario and not how it should be tested but obviously a different test than what he did on the RMC-1. When tested to a real world scenario the results are as we publish and what I posted several post back. We have very tight QA standards and every single unit is tested and logged. We don't do a simple snap shot of a couple of metrics. The reason we don't post the QA reports is simple because it won't mean anything to the vast majority of people. Attached are two random QA test from production today. One is of an RMC-1 and the other is from the XMC-2. If you are a gluten for punishment, please feel free to go through them and you will see just how closely the two units match each other and just how well they perform. Lonnie RMC-1_2101851V010423.pdf (709.5 KB) XMC-2_2112032V010011.pdf (1015.78 KB) |
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richb
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Post by richb on Sept 9, 2021 16:29:41 GMT -5
Agree with you. I am an Emotiva customer too and let’s face it most of us visit all these websites. you can easily see that from the posts. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Not shove it under the carpet. I believe in the good faith of both ASR and Emotiva. I don’t buy the agenda stuff. I don’t think ASR has a business interest. No conflict of interest. Let’s compare similar tests with parameters and units the same. Simple! This isn’t going away so better get it done. Do we as owners need to send another XMC-2 to ASR! Or can we simply come together and get to the bottom of this to everybody satisfaction! I see it different. Asr keeps measuring chinese products and giving them glowing reviews and now suddenly everyone is getting those products. He is supposed to expose the snake oil products but I only see him measuring old amps, old dacs and discontinued products from the companies that charge a lot. Just check the review and detailed measurements of a 20 year old amplifier from Audio Research. And all the comments from their zombie followers trashing the company. Speaking of 20 year old amps, I was thinking of sending Amir my Sunfire Cinema amp (if he wants to test it) after it gets re-capped.  The concept of a regulated power supply with class A/B stage in the Gen3 amps has been around for a while, though the tech is quite different. - Rich |
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KeithL
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Post by KeithL on Sept 9, 2021 16:53:09 GMT -5
It's not at all any sort of "attack"... nobody does anything without a reason... which is the definition of an agenda.
However you cannot expect to compare apples and oranges. For example, no sports car, regardless of price, can approach the performance of a bicycle - in terms of engine noise or gas mileage. But you wouldn't expect them to - because they are different devices.
Compared to a processor a DAC is a relatively simple device. Yet you will find that DACs, even with identical and equally excellent THD and S/N specs (or SINAD specs), sometimes manage to sound quite different. The reason is that virtually all modern DACs include an oversampling filter - and offer a variety of different options and choices in how that filter is designed... As it turns out, those choices can have a major effect on how a DAC sounds, yet there are currently no widely used standards for measuring them or comparing them. You can examine and analyze those characteristics using various tools including images of impulse response... But there are no standard methods for doing so and you cannot reliably infer how a DAC will sound from that information... at least for now...
Your choice of "headroom" is an interesting example. In analog circuitry you are always faced with the possibility that a signal may exceed an expected level by a somewhat arbitrary amount. However, with a digital audio signal, this possibility does not exist. At most you may see "an intersample over" - but that will never exceed 3-4 dB.
And, in a processor, where math is applied to the digital audio values, it is possible to calculate values that fall outside the allowable range. But, to counteract this, processors use normalization to automatically adjust those values so they again fall within acceptable limits. And, yes, that sort of thing makes determining precisely what's going on a lot more complicated.
We have a limited amount of resources which we can dedicate to meeting one particular person's expectations. (And, once you get on that treadmill, it can be a difficult thing to escape.)
And, as I mentioned before, our primary agenda is delivering a product that delivers the best possible sound quality...
And we consider measurements to be a means to that end... but not an end in and of themselves...
EVERYBODY has an agenda.... As a manufacturer it is our "agenda" to sell a lot of products... And a good way to do that is to have a lot of happy customers... (And, to a lesser degree, simply having a bunch of favorable reviews does help.) The agenda of a review site is to get people to come to their site and read their content. They can do this by providing reviews that their customers view or perceive as useful. And they can do that by providing measurements or other information that their customers find useful... Or by providing opinions that their customers find useful (for example if you find that your tastes agree with those of your favorite movie critic or art critic)...
Or by being informative to their customers in other ways... Or simply by posting controversial content that encourages people to visit their site to participate in debates or discussions... One excellent strategy is to offer your customers something that they cannot get anywhere else. With hardware products this often takes the form of "exclusive technology" or "the latest and greatest new features"... (But offering measurements in some unique format that nobody else uses works pretty well too... )
Focusing on "Agenda" approaches attacking the messengers that is is not often well received.  My take on ASR's mission is to measure audio products performance in a standard manner and selected SINAD to measure against the potential dynamic range of digital sources. 0 SPL is defined as the lower limit of human hearing (actually, it can dip below 0 SPL). A strict view is that any product that achieves 120 dB SINAD that is guaranteed to be completely transparent. 96 dB is completely transparent for 16-bit (CD) sources. You'd be hard pressed to actually find a source with 16 bit of dynamic range but conceptually, this the argument is logical. ASR has an expectation that expensive processors (multiple thousands) should be able to approach the performance of a relatively inexpensive desktop DACs (sub $1000). This does not account for the complexity of AVR/AVPs but the AVR/AVP ratings are presented in their own class. IMO, a high-channel count processor needs have some headroom because DSP processing and bass, this could be up to 20 dB but much less typically which is an argument for good baseline performance. It is fair to say that this single metric is not really telling the story of sound quality of complex processors. It is entirely possible that the implementation of DACs, DSPs, and filters may dwarf this one metric. The answer to unflattering measurements is more measurements, perhaps, dare I say, published under the vendors' product specifications. - Rich |
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Lsc
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Post by Lsc on Sept 9, 2021 16:59:27 GMT -5
Gentleman, Let me preface the following comments by stating I'm not attacking anyone here or on the other site.I'm going to try and state the facts as I see them in hopes that it will answer your questions. As I have said before, I can't answer anything in regards to Amir's test. You should ask him directly. We tried to set up our system to as closely match what he did as possible and that produced the -85db down harmonics but this is not a real world scenario and not how it should be tested but obviously a different test than what he did on the RMC-1. When tested to a real world scenario the results are as we publish and what I posted several post back. We have very tight QA standards and every single unit is tested and logged. We don't do a simple snap shot of a couple of metrics. The reason we don't post the QA reports is simple because it won't mean anything to the vast majority of people. Attached are two random QA test from production today. One is of an RMC-1 and the other is from the XMC-2. If you are a gluten for punishment, please feel free to go through them and you will see just how closely the two units match each other and just how well they perform. Lonnie View AttachmentView AttachmentHi Lonnie, Do you think it would be worth your time to send a RMC1, RMC1L and XMC2 to ASR for their test results? If his results aren’t as close to yours then it would answer the question of could ASR’s testing be flawed? |
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richb
Sensei
Oppo Beta Group - Audioholics Reviewer
Posts: 890
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Post by richb on Sept 9, 2021 17:02:28 GMT -5
It's not at all any sort of "attack"... nobody does anything without a reason... which is the definition of an agenda. However you cannot expect to compare apples and oranges. For example, no sports car, regardless of price, can approach the performance of a bicycle - in terms of engine noise or gas mileage. But you wouldn't expect them to - because they are different devices. Compared to a processor a DAC is a relatively simple device. Yet you will find that DACs, even with identical and equally excellent THD and S/N specs (or SINAD specs), sometimes manage to sound quite different. The reason is that virtually all modern DACs include an oversampling filter - and offer a variety of different options and choices in how that filter is designed... As it turns out, those choices can have a major effect on how a DAC sounds, yet there are currently no widely used standards for measuring them or comparing them. You can examine and analyze those characteristics using various tools including images of impulse response... But there are no standard methods for doing so and you cannot reliably infer how a DAC will sound from that information... at least for now...
Your choice of "headroom" is an interesting example. In analog circuitry you are always faced with the possibility that a signal may exceed an expected level by a somewhat arbitrary amount. However, with a digital audio signal, this possibility does not exist. At most you may see "an intersample over" - but that will never exceed 3-4 dB.
And, in a processor, where math is applied to the digital audio values, it is possible to calculate values that fall outside the allowable range. But, to counteract this, processors use normalization to automatically adjust those values so they again fall within acceptable limits. And, yes, that sort of thing makes determining precisely what's going on a lot more complicated. We have a limited amount of resources which we can dedicate to meeting one particular person's expectations. (And, once you get on that treadmill, it can be a difficult thing to escape.) And, as I mentioned before, our primary agenda is delivering a product that delivers the best possible sound quality...
And we consider measurements to be a means to that end... but not an end in and of themselves...
Focusing on "Agenda" approaches attacking the messengers that is is not often well received. My take on ASR's mission is to measure audio products performance in a standard manner and selected SINAD to measure against the potential dynamic range of digital sources. 0 SPL is defined as the lower limit of human hearing (actually, it can dip below 0 SPL). A strict view is that any product that achieves 120 dB SINAD that is guaranteed to be completely transparent. 96 dB is completely transparent for 16-bit (CD) sources. You'd be hard pressed to actually find a source with 16 bit of dynamic range but conceptually, this the argument is logical. ASR has an expectation that expensive processors (multiple thousands) should be able to approach the performance of a relatively inexpensive desktop DACs (sub $1000). This does not account for the complexity of AVR/AVPs but the AVR/AVP ratings are presented in their own class. IMO, a high-channel count processor needs have some headroom because DSP processing and bass, this could be up to 20 dB but much less typically which is an argument for good baseline performance. It is fair to say that this single metric is not really telling the story of sound quality of complex processors. It is entirely possible that the implementation of DACs, DSPs, and filters may dwarf this one metric. The answer to unflattering measurements is more measurements, perhaps, dare I say, published under the vendors' product specifications. - Rich My reference to headroom is the need to attenuate the digital signal to perform DSP functions that cannot exceed 0 dBFS. Digital attenuation does not attenuate noise, so that is my meaning. I completely agree on DACs sounding differently and amps can sound differently as well. Amir does not monetize his site, but I agree we are all human. - Rich |
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Lonnie
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Post by Lonnie on Sept 9, 2021 17:12:14 GMT -5
Gentleman, Let me preface the following comments by stating I'm not attacking anyone here or on the other site.I'm going to try and state the facts as I see them in hopes that it will answer your questions. As I have said before, I can't answer anything in regards to Amir's test. You should ask him directly. We tried to set up our system to as closely match what he did as possible and that produced the -85db down harmonics but this is not a real world scenario and not how it should be tested but obviously a different test than what he did on the RMC-1. When tested to a real world scenario the results are as we publish and what I posted several post back. We have very tight QA standards and every single unit is tested and logged. We don't do a simple snap shot of a couple of metrics. The reason we don't post the QA reports is simple because it won't mean anything to the vast majority of people. Attached are two random QA test from production today. One is of an RMC-1 and the other is from the XMC-2. If you are a gluten for punishment, please feel free to go through them and you will see just how closely the two units match each other and just how well they perform. Lonnie View AttachmentView AttachmentHi Lonnie, Do you think it would be worth your time to send a RMC1, RMC1L and XMC2 to ASR for their test results? If his results aren’t as close to yours then it would answer the question of could ASR’s testing be flawed? I'm happy to send him units to test but I can tell you his results will be vastly different from ours if he follows his current way of testing. Heck, I would be happy to send him our QA test to run on his system and at that point I would expect him to get the exact same results. Lonnie |
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Post by louron on Sept 9, 2021 17:25:57 GMT -5
Agree with you. I am an Emotiva customer too and let’s face it most of us visit all these websites. you can easily see that from the posts. Let’s get to the bottom of this. Not shove it under the carpet. I believe in the good faith of both ASR and Emotiva. I don’t buy the agenda stuff. I don’t think ASR has a business interest. No conflict of interest. Let’s compare similar tests with parameters and units the same. Simple! This isn’t going away so better get it done. Do we as owners need to send another XMC-2 to ASR! Or can we simply come together and get to the bottom of this to everybody satisfaction! I see it different. Asr keeps measuring chinese products and giving them glowing reviews and now suddenly everyone is getting those products. He is supposed to expose the snake oil products but I only see him measuring old amps, old dacs and discontinued products from the companies that charge a lot. Just check the review and detailed measurements of a 20 year old amplifier from Audio Research. And all the comments from their zombie followers trashing the company. You obviously have an agenda! He is measuring what people send him. And also what some companies sends him. FYI he ,endured the XMC-1 and the RMC-1 …. And oops the XMC-2…. I guess some of us are biased. Treating people if zombies because you do not agree shows your greatness….exposing snake oil products means measuring and he also give de headed panthers to many Chinese products. You are losing credibility. |
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Post by brutiarti on Sept 9, 2021 17:31:25 GMT -5
I see it different. Asr keeps measuring chinese products and giving them glowing reviews and now suddenly everyone is getting those products. He is supposed to expose the snake oil products but I only see him measuring old amps, old dacs and discontinued products from the companies that charge a lot. Just check the review and detailed measurements of a 20 year old amplifier from Audio Research. And all the comments from their zombie followers trashing the company. You obviously have an agenda! He is measuring what people send him. And also what some companies sends him. FYI he ,endured the XMC-1 and the RMC-1 …. And oops the XMC-2…. I guess some of us are biased. Treating people if zombies because you do not agree shows your greatness….exposing snake oil products means measuring and he also give de headed panthers to many Chinese products. You are losing credibility. It is irresponsible to recommend or not recomend a 20+ year old amplifier period. And let their fanboys trash a company based on those results. That is just common sense not an agenda |
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Post by jra on Sept 9, 2021 17:44:13 GMT -5
"What we've got here is failure to communicate" :-).
Full disclosure, I don't have an XMC-2 or an RMC1[L]. I have 3 XMC-1's and all my amplifiers are Emotiva, as are all of my computer monitor speakers (sitting here enjoying them as I type :-), so I'm blue through and through. When I finally need to upgrade I will buy XMC-2's without hesitation.
The reason I buy Emotiva is I trust them. I trust them to provide good products at an amazing price. I trust them to support the products they sell (and I've had great experiences with that personally). I trust that they are *NOT* trying to cheat or rip anyone off. I trust the responses that Lonnie and Keith are giving here in the face of some quite withering and (IMHO) rather undeserved criticism. Emotiva are a great American success story, and I'm cheering for them all the way.
I also trust that ASR is doing his best to measure products sent to him to the best of his ability. I'm a big fan of his site, and often read it to learn more about products available. He is also very honest and reports his findings without fear or favor.
Yep, we have some strange conflicting data here, and people of good conscience are scratching their heads trying to make sense of it, which I also trust that in time they will.
In the words of someone wiser than I from a long time ago, "Can't we all just get along ?" :-). In the meantime, let's enjoy the music brought to us by the boys in blue :-).
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Post by monkumonku on Sept 9, 2021 17:57:35 GMT -5
Not sure if Amir is really "agenda driven" but otherwise I agree with you. If you like a product then what difference do the numbers make? How many of us know all the specs for our cars? The likely answer would be not many, and to add to that, "I don't need to know the specs, I just like driving it." Or, "It does the job." So if that is the case with your car, then what is the deal with your audio gear? What if you have a car whose top speed is supposed to be 140 mph but some magazine or web site says it could only do 135 mph? Do you even drive that fast anyway? All depends on what you bought that car for. If it's just a commuter to take you back and forth to work, the numbers might have little importance outside miles per gallon and average maintenance costs. Now if you bought a High Performance car, your probably going to want to know about its performance in minuet detail, and these details ARE going to matter to you. Acceleration, braking, skid pad numbers, 0-60, 0-100, top speed are all extremely important to that owner. Just ask the guy that takes his car to race on track days on the weekends, like us listening at night with the lights off to the best recordings we can find, we share a passion. So we buy the best performance we can afford.
We don't buy expensive processors because we don't care about performance or getting "the best" for our dollar, for that there are $299 receivers on Amazon.
I agree with you about the purposes of buying a car. However, if you are one of those who are very passionate about high performance cars, I would assume that you would not purchase one unless you knew all the specs on it and had read reviews that covered all the measurements. Similarly, some very passionate audiophiles would not purchase any gear without knowing the measurements. You would want to know that in advance. My point is for those who buy gear and are impressed with how it sounds, and then freak out when they subsequently see measurements that are less than stellar. At that point the equipment is not held in as high esteem even though it sounded the same before they knew the measurements as it does afterwards. Or, if measurements reveal that the level of distortion that they thought their unit had does in fact have a higher measured level even though both are far below the threshold of audibility. But now they are just too bothered to let it go. |
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Post by monkumonku on Sept 9, 2021 18:02:22 GMT -5
Hi Lonnie, Do you think it would be worth your time to send a RMC1, RMC1L and XMC2 to ASR for their test results? If his results aren’t as close to yours then it would answer the question of could ASR’s testing be flawed? I'm happy to send him units to test but I can tell you his results will be vastly different from ours if he follows his current way of testing. Heck, I would be happy to send him our QA test to run on his system and at that point I would expect him to get the exact same results. Lonnie In an earlier post you mentioned that you use a "canned test" whereas Amir does not and instead sets up each test separately so that he can evaluate it. If you do this across equipment, doesn't that make for an apples vs. oranges scenario? Also, practically speaking, do the measurements he obtained affect the sound of the unit as opposed to Emo's published measurements? I think the bottom line ought to be how does the equipment sound. The ears should be the ultimate judge, That said, I do understand the curiosity over the discrepancy in the findings and it would be good to reconcile the differing results. But that's an academic quest. |
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Lonnie
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Post by Lonnie on Sept 9, 2021 18:22:04 GMT -5
So I would like to clarify something here.
Amir is testing home theatre processors as if they were some simple two channel DAC and this I believe is the root to the discussion.
DACs are very simple products, you have an input MUX going staight to the DAC chips, an I/V converter and then onto a volume control if it has an analog volume control, other wise the volume is done within the DAC chip itself. That’s it, pretty simple and very straightforward.
By contrast a Home Theatre processor is a very complex device. Aside from all the different inputs and how they get handled, you also have to deal with Dolby and DTS decoders within the DSP, time delays, crossovers, mixers, EQs and much more. All of which affect how the signals are handled and manipulated. Thus, the testing methodologies need to suit the product under test.
Thus we have a fundamental difference in how things are tested. When I test our own DACs, we look for very similar things, although our test are quite a bit deeper, but when we test our HT processors, the test are setup to suit the piece of gear under test. One test does not fit all and this in my opinion is the root of this whole discussion.
Lonnie
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Post by audiosyndrome on Sept 9, 2021 18:39:23 GMT -5
Hi Lonnie, As a very long time Emotiva customer, I appreciate all the work you and your team put into providing some of the best HiFi gear at very competive prices. As a devoted vinylphile, I am also grateful for the Balanced XLR input and Reference Stereo mode on my XMC-2. I think it would be cool and help others gain confidence if you or your team could take a look at a few of ASR's processor/AVR review tests and try to recreate them with the XMC-2. I know this would be a lot of work. But, you could then send the exact XMC-2 to Amir @asr and he could perform the exact tests. If you both achieve the same results, then you would be doing the Scientific method by independently replicating the results. The downside would be if the results continue to diverge. I do appreciate you posting the XMC-2 PDF AP plot which to my eyes look exceptionally good. Thanks. Amir measured the Okto DAC 8 Stereo (DAC) as did JA over at Stereophile. They both stated that “it measures superbly”. More importantly, the measurements by both were identical, IIIDENTICAL! JA knows what he is doing. Amir knows what he is doing. Doesn’t answer the question why the XMC measured differently from the RMC but adds some chops to Amir’s ability to take (consistent) measurements. Russ |
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Chris
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Post by Chris on Sept 9, 2021 18:41:58 GMT -5
So I would like to clarify something here. Amir is testing home theatre processors as if they were some simple two channel DAC and this I believe is the root to the discussion. DACs are very simple products, you have an input MUX going staight to the DAC chips, an I/V converter and then onto a volume control if it has an analog volume control, other wise the volume is done within the DAC chip itself. That’s it, pretty simple and very straightforward. By contrast a Home Theatre processor is a very complex device. Aside from all the different inputs and how they get handled, you also have to deal with Dolby and DTS decoders within the DSP, time delays, crossovers, mixers, EQs and much more. All of which affect how the signals are handled and manipulated. Thus, the testing methodologies need to suit the product under test. Thus we have a fundamental difference in how things are tested. When I test our own DACs, we look for very similar things, although our test are quite a bit deeper, but when we test our HT processors, the test are setup to suit the piece of gear under test. One test does not fit all and this in my opinion is the root of this whole discussion. Lonnie I very much appreciate this response and believe it is very understandable. Selfishly, I would very much like to see just one XMC-2 measurement since it is of high importance to me. I would love to see a simple SINAD (THD+N) measurement of the Analog Balanced Input in Reference Stereo mode. Unlike most others, I use this feature at least 50% of the time. It is one of the core reasons I own the XMC-2 over other processors/AVRs that digitize all analog inputs. Thanks. |
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But it looks like a couple of things are happening:
(Keith and I have spoken a few times through the years, though he would not remember, and I like the guy FWIW. Except for the XMC-1 HDMI board mess I lived through with everyone else, my personal experience with Emotiva's products and support has been very positive.)
