MC-1

[ttocs]

^^^^What he said. This is not an official Support system, just a forum for Users.

[stikle]

I received my MC-1 (renewed), A6, & A7 amps in May of this year.

Background & Hardware

I started my home theater journey in 1994 with an Onkyo Home Theater-in-a-Box Dolby Prologic system. Then in 1995 I upgraded to a Pioneer 5.1 receiver (which I still have) and have had more than a few other Onkyo and Denon AVRs over the years as I upgraded to include new technology. Currently I have a dedicated theater (full build thread here) wired for 9.4.4 Atmos that has been unchanged for 5 years.  I decided I was ready to try something new and enter the realm of separates.   I’m “upgrading” from a Denon AVR-X6200 + 2 channel Onkyo amp.

My primary source streaming device is an nVidia Shield TV Pro (2019) which properly bitstreams audio out (unlike ATV & GC). I also have an Oppo UDP-203 UHD disc player, an AppleTV 4K, and a Google Chromecast 4K (both rarely used).

My local file streaming source is a Synology NAS running Plex Server. Streaming services include YouTube TV, Amazon Prime Video, Discovery+, and various other random services.

Display: 75" Vizio P75-C1 4K (2016) - being replaced by a 77" LG C4 OLED this Friday!
Front soundstage speakers & subs: SVS
All other speakers: Mirage Omnisat OS3
HDMI cables: Monoprice Certified
RCA cables: MediaBridge Ultra
Speaker wires: Monoprice 14 gauge CL2.

Note: The front two subs are Y-split at the SW1 output, while the rear two have a single RCA from SW2 to the back of the room where it’s Y-split to the rear two subs.

I’ve had zero technical issues up to this point until swapping in the Emotiva hardware.

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TLDR; After updating the firmware there remains only one minor issue that has popped up in a couple specific use scenarios.

Experience

The MC-1 and both amps showed up in pristine double boxed condition.  They are built like tanks.  The amps are being triggered in a chain from the MC-1 and have performed flawlessly.

The MC-1 on the other hand...

Disclaimer: I was in computer IT for 30 years and felt kinda stupid at the end of the day.  Being a "renewed" unit, I figured it would have come with the latest firmware and didn't bother to check, much to my chagrin.  I also felt like I could try and work through the issues first without contacting support.  So I got busy testing, evaluating, and documenting things for a forthcoming E-Mail to support.  I was disappointed at first because things didn't just work, but I was determined to see it through as there's no way Emotiva would release such a buggy product.

Here are my notes that I never sent to support as the issues no longer exist:

1. I had to run EmoQ three times. It seems buggy.
   • The first time there was no test tone output from Top Rear Right and it failed.
   • The second time, there was no tone from Top Rear Left and it failed.
   • The third time was successful and individual level tones play correctly from all speakers.
   
   
2. There is a continuous popping on both SW1 & SW2. It’s not a sharply toned “pop” sound but more muted.
   
   It appears to be related to audio output from the MC-1 (not a subwoofer problem) and is pretty annoying.
   
   • The popping also seems to be louder after bass heavy scenes, then gets quieter.
   • If I pause the media that I’m watching as it's happening then the popping continues.
   • If I am watching something and hit MUTE then there is instantly zero popping.  Un-mute and the popping returns.
     
   • If I pause, then mute, then the popping also goes away.
   
   
3. The other big issue is complete lack of audio from known good local source files (MKV) > 90% of the time.
   
   
   • The movie starts playing with zero video issue, but no audio. Pause then Play does nothing to restore audio.
     
   • Sometimes fast forwarding, backing up, then playing will get the audio stream playing, but most often the only fix is to…
     
   • Stop playing, then restarting the stream from scratch (1-5 times) will usually engage the audio stream and the movie plays normally.
     
   • Sometimes, albeit rarely, the movie will stream and play just fine the first time around.
     
     I did some extensive testing streaming from Disney+.  There were zero issues with multiple episodes of Fallout or testing other shows.
     
   
   
4. Minor cosmetic anomaly – When I start streaming media that is Dolby Vision encoded, there is a flash of color on the screen. 
    This did not occur with any of my Denon AVRs. Not a deal breaker, just something I noticed.
   
   

I’ve never encountered these issues with any AVR before, they’ve just worked.

This has been much more of a struggle of frustration than I expected.

And then, after a week of this...I had an epiphany.  I checked these forums for a firmware update and voila' there was one available. 

After downloading and updating the MC-1, EVERY one of my issues was resolved.  Whew and Yay!

I've spent the last 5 months more or less just enjoying the immersive sound I now am enveloped by. 

I've been a Denon fan for many years and have advocated them to my family and friends who all like them.  For the money, for the average person, all-in-one AVRs are a good value.

Two positive changes since moving to Emotiva:

1. My wide speakers are almost always active, making the front soundstage just sound amazing. 
   I don't think the Denon AVR was processing the output to the wides like it should have been as content that I'm familiar with now has audio in the wides that hasn't been there previously.
2. The bass from my subwoofers seems to have a lot more presence and just sounds better.  Not more but better.  It may be placebo effect, but I'm completely fine with that at this point.

If I had to nitpick, I really only have two things at this time:

1. The audio portion of my system takes a long time to boot up and output a signal to my TV compared to the old AVR..  No biggie, I'm in no rush.
2. I have a movie and one season of a TV show that still have audio issues when playing on my Emotiva gear.  There's a little bit of audio at the start, then it cuts out.  Then after a bit there's a blip of sound, then silence.  Repeat. When this happens, sometimes the only way to restore full audio output from a different source file is to power down the MC-1...like it gets REALLY confused.
   
   I can watch them upstairs on the living room system (Denon AVR/nVidia Shield 2017) with no issues.  
   
   The series is in MP4 format with AAC 5.1  audio.  So is the one movie that I can think of that exhibits the same symptom.  This one I think I'm going to go ahead and E-Mail support on, just because.

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At the end of the day, I will give the (updated) MC-1 a 9/10 only because it doesn't perfectly play everything I've tried, unlike my old AVR.

I'm very satisfied with this investment in my theater.

-Seth

Attachments:

[KeithL]

Just a quick comment about the audio formats used in MP4 and MKV files...

My comment is simply that the audio format used in both of those is subject to considerable variation...
So, when you play either of them on a computer-based player, or using ARC or eARC on a TV, the actual audio format that is output may not be at all consistent.
And, when it goes through computer-based decoding, or re-encoding on a TV on its way to ARC, the resulting audio output format may or may not be "very standard".

For example, I frequently both download files from Youtube, and from "sources that have less specific provenance"...
And, virtually all of them play just fine on VLC, which is my go-to computer-based player, on a computer...
But, if I try to "cast" them to my Samsung TV, using Samsung's matching "casting app", which is intended to go with the model TV I have...
Usually I get both audio and video just fine...
But sometimes the file won't play and I get an "audio format not supported" error...
And sometimes I get that error, and the file faults... and then the video plays without the audio... or, even stranger, the audio plays without the video.
And I sometimes see this problem with only certain files, captured from Youtube using the same software, indicating that the original encoding format is not consistent.

My point is simply that there are a lot of non-standard files in the world...
And which of them will play on what gear is always a bit of an unknown...
And both MKV and MP4 make this problem worse because they offer a lot of choices to the person creating the files... (not all of which are standard).
(It's also worth noting that some of these variations are so minor or tricksy that they are impossible to figure out in detail "just looking at the file CODEC"...) 

Oct 29, 2024 15:36:22 GMT -5 stikle said:

................................
The series is in MP4 format with AAC 5.1  audio.  So is the one movie that I can think of that exhibits the same symptom.  This one I think I'm going to go ahead and E-Mail support on, just because.

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......................

[stikle]

Well, last night I figured out the cause of my AAC audio issue (described above) and it's repeatable every time.

When I am playing  AAC encoded content, it works properly in every sound mode except Dolby Upmix.

I watched 15 minutes or so of a movie that has AAC audio.  I was in Neural:X mode and there wasn't one single audio issue.

While the movie was playing, I cycled through the various modes (Pure, Stereo, etc.) and watched for a few minutes on each one with no problems. 

As soon as I hit Dolby Upmix (my preferred mode), the sound dropped out.  When I changed to the next mode (Neural:X) the sound returned. 

I watched another 15-20 minutes without issue and then cycled through the sound modes with the exact same results.

The same movie with the same testing on my Denon AVR upstairs has no issues in any sound mode.

Therefore, there appears to be a problem using the Dolby Upmixer on AAC encoded audio on the MC-1 with this particular firmware.

-Seth

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