UMC-1 software update available! 2/9/10

[snodog]

In the video Lonnie mentioned possibly reversing the polarity of speakers. What exactly is this?

[SticknStones]

Feb 13, 2010 19:04:10 GMT -5 @snodog said:

In the video Lonnie mentioned possibly reversing the polarity of speakers. What exactly is this?

Swapping the +/- connections from either the back of the amp or speaker posts.

[snodog]

just on one end? Isnt that a typical no no crossing positive to negative?

[bootman]

Feb 13, 2010 19:33:13 GMT -5 @snodog said:

just on one end? Isnt that a typical no no crossing positive to negative?

It will not damage the speakers or the amp, if that is what you mean.

[snodog]

is it likely to happen with only one speaker at a time? Sorry so many questions, just would like to have the knowledge for the future.

[billmac]

Feb 13, 2010 19:04:10 GMT -5 @snodog said:

In the video Lonnie mentioned possibly reversing the polarity of speakers. What exactly is this?

A bad idea IMO .

Bill

[moodyman]

Feb 13, 2010 19:31:40 GMT -5 SticknStones said:

Feb 13, 2010 19:04:10 GMT -5 @snodog said:

In the video Lonnie mentioned possibly reversing the polarity of speakers. What exactly is this?

Swapping the L/R connections from either the back of the amp or speaker posts.

No...lonnie seemed to mean reversing the red/black speaker connection on the back of the speaker or amp. Some people have reported that EMO-Q indicated that their speakers were out of phase..when in fact they weren't. Do not do this unless you ARE POSITIVE your speakers are out phase...

[snodog]

Yeah I kind of wondered how many people were going to try it because they think there speakers are out of phase now. I had just never heard of it happening.

[grapenuts]

reflections from the emitted test tone can cause a speaker to come back "out of phase" from an auto eq system. Don't be quick to think your speaker is internally out of phase. Check the binding posts and make sure you have your speaker cables connected correctly. If they are, most likely you are good to go. This is not a specific fault of the Emo EQ. My Yammy used to do it, and my Denon did it as well. With ML speakers, this becomes a more frequent response.

[snodog]

Hey grapenuts how are you liking yours? You were one of the first to get it just curious if it is still impressive to you. I get mine Monday so Im excited.

[hemster]

Well, I upgraded my UMC-1 today and I have to say it went just fine! Mind you.. I did the unthinkable.. printed out the manual and followed each step meticulously!! I did a reset to factory defaults at the end but my input names were garbled. No biggie.. I set them up again in no time.


I also upgraded my Oppo BDP-83 to the lastest firmware and that went smoothly too. I love the fact that I can now move subtitles vertically! I watch a lot of movies in 1:2.35 scope mode so this was a great win.


Emo-Q went well and it detected all my speakers and gauged the distances to within a foot. It did set the front right speaker crossover at 250 Hz but I fixed that manually. Stored the settings in Manual1. Then for kicks I ran it again with the mic pointing at the center channel by about 30 degrees (I switched it off, went to lunch and then tried again).. It failed to detect my rear speakers, likely due to the forward bias. Tried 2 more times with various angles pointing to the front (not measured by guesstimates are 20, 25 degrees) but it would not detect the rear 2 speakers. Ah well. Now I'm tired and giving up for the day!

The UMC sounds better than before based on my tuner and CD listening. I watched part of 1000 BC and it looked and sounded great.

With a DVD and the Video output set to passthrough I get 1080p/24 but with it set to Auto I get 1080p/60. Is this because in Auto mode, the UMC is querying the projector and getting back a response of 1080p/60?
I do have the Oppo set to upconvert DVDs to 1080p. Some DVDs look terrible in this mode though.

Anyway, more fun in store for Sunday and I still haven't started on programming the remote!

Enjoy your chocolate & roses day everyone!

[roadrunner]

I really hope that some of you are only trying to be humerus when describing how you did your mike placement for the Auto calibration with Emo-Q. You should never physically be near your mike during the testing. Your results will be totally useless if you are. If possible, you should not even be in the room while the UMC-1 is running through the test tones.

I have also heard some members saying they place the mike on the seat of the couch and one person said he used a tripod on the seat with the mike leaning against the back of his chair. Your are guaranteeing the results will be strange if you really are doing so. If you have a high-back chair or couch, make sure you are at least a foot away from the back or your test results will be severely distorted by reflections. Even standing near the mike placement is a no no.

All of these auto correction systems have problems like those you are finding with the Emo-Q. The last I read posts on a variety of other forums dealing with auto correction software (about 2 years ago) readers using any of the various brands were complaining about how bad and how inconsistent the reading were. If I hadn't checked the dates on the posts in the Lounge, I would have thought I was reading the same posts I saw two years ago. I don't know if the publishers of those other auto correction packages have improved much since then, but I have my doubts. I have always manually performed my speakers setup and equalization. Real life rooms, as a rule, have so many acoustical problems that they cannot be viewed as accurate for most rooms. They are only a tool to help you identify areas to concentrate on. Sometimes using them with blind faith is worse than doing nothing; and sometimes they will improve the sound, but they are so inconsistent you never know which result you will get.

At least Emo-Q gives you the tools to go in and manually correct the things that common sense tells you can't be right. It has tremendous flexibility for a pre/pro for performing room equalizations. Unfortunately, dialing in good response will always take a lot of tweaking to get it right. Both Lonnie and Big Dan gave some good pointers on what to do. Experiment and see what happens... just don't expect magical results from any auto correction scheme.

[hemster]

I placed the mic on the seat back. about in the middle where the head would normally be. I then lay still on the floor next to the cabinet (which is against the rear wall of the room, some 5 ft away from the seats. The seats are on a 12" riser. Thus, my entire profile was about 8" off the floor in a supine position. I was not near the mic at all. I know better!

Also, I did manually adjust a couple of settings after running EMO-Q which I consider as a starting point, not a panacea. Ditto for all the other equalization systems out there. My expectation from any correction system is that it gets me to a start point and I can adjust and tweak from there.

The only issue I have is the totally divergent results with only 1 change between different EMO-Q runs - namely the position of the mic.. which remained in the same vertical plane but the horizontal angle changed slightly as I moved it facing toward the center channel.

As an engineer, I do know about "design of experiments" and do not widely change multiple variables but just one. Also, during each run, I was positioned in exactly the same position.

The widely differing results for each run are not within experimental variance! I had run AudessyXT with my Marantz receiver several times. The results were different but not by much. So, agreed this is only a tool but it should not present such a wide range of results. I am glad that Emotiva provide so much flexibility to adjust various parameters. I am happy with my UMC-1 and I will manually perform a full setup with a sound meter next week.

Still... no blind faith here but I can't help wondering...why such strange results??

[Nemesis.ie]

Feb 13, 2010 13:11:05 GMT -5 venaka said:

Feb 13, 2010 12:42:56 GMT -5 Nemesis.ie said:

I mean what diameter is the threaded hole.

Do you have a ruler?

Right behindmy sitting position is a wall, I nailed the mic vertically on the wall centered facing my tv..Wow, Big, biG difference. To me the settings are better if you run it vertically..Has anyone ran it vertically.
I was just placing it ontop of my couch, centered pretty much how the emoq video explained, but vertically i get better results.
my fronts are 80 as opposed to 120 and up when i had the emoq sitting on top of couch.

I thought vertical (i.e. pointing at the ceiling) was the standard way to run it? It is on my Yamaha anyway. We should discuss the direction the mic is pointing, not the orientation of the base I think.

The question is, if running it horizontally (i.e. pointed at the centre speaker (or that direction)) works better - it looks like it is for many folks.

Are folks getting the screwy readings with it vertical also ones with a wall right behind the seating position I wonder? If so, that would probably explain it as a wall that close will give lots of reflections. In those cases I could see a horizontal placement (i.e. mic pointing horizontally, not the base)(and also moving the mic 30cm or so out from the wall could well improve results.

[duckrabbit]

Fellow UMC-1 users,

After a huge number of attempts and a very large investment of time, I *finally* have my UMC-1 firmware updated.

I mention this fact just because I feel that I took a lot of encouragement from reading other peoples' experiences in this thread. More than one person mentioned that it seemed like raw persistence did the trick. I would have given up many many hours I finally succeeded if I hadn't read those reports.

For anyone else fighting the the error messages while attempting the update ("send "0" no resonse" "download file" etc.) I definitely encourage you to keep at it. I did nothing different on the attempt that finally worked than on the previous attempts. It's frustrating while you're fighting it, but it feels great finally to get it to work.

Cheers,

Paul (duckrabbit)

[jimsfield]

When I installed the new firmware I ran my laptop in safe mode and turned off my antivirus software. I think having as few things running as possible will increase the chances of success. My installation was successful the first time even though I turned my laptop off by mistake during the process.

[ratmice]

Feb 14, 2010 1:19:46 GMT -5 roadrunner said:

All of these auto correction systems have problems like those you are finding with the Emo-Q.

All systems have issues with mic placement and reflections etc... it's the nature of what you are trying to achieve.

However, I have never had as inconsistent results, non-sensical setttings, and values for speakers that don't exist on any other system (MCACC, Audyssey). It seems that many others are having similar issues. Granted, things may have changed for the other systems, but your blanket statement just seems incorrect.

Not trying to flame you, just pointing out that there are good, working, room correction systems - so people don;t get turned off to trying them. As always YMMV.

[grapenuts]

My unit is running very nicely now with the update. No more phantom center, no more sub xover problems (but it still sets it hot so just manually adjust that) and really I'm just enjoying it right now. I am not being as technical as it is working as advertised at this point and she is providing me with excellent video gaming/movie/music listening/tv watching experiences. I still haven't broken down my separate pre set up and tried the l/R analog section to see if that has improved due to time constraints, but overall the UMC has taken a huge step forward with this update. Great job to Lonnie and the crew for jumping on the issues, taking the accountability, and releasing a remedy with a very good response time. These are great folks guys. Enjoy the UMC-1!
Adam

[Nemesis.ie]

Feb 14, 2010 1:10:05 GMT -5 hemster said:

I also upgraded my Oppo BDP-83 to the lastest firmware and that went smoothly too. I love the fact that I can now move subtitles vertically! I watch a lot of movies in 1:2.35 scope mode so this was a great win.

Sweet - for those running Windows based HTPCs; Media Player Classic Home Cinema allows you to move them up, down, left and right. It is really handy.

[venaka]

Feb 14, 2010 10:33:00 GMT -5 grapenuts said:

My unit is running very nicely now with the update. No more phantom center, no more sub xover problems (but it still sets it hot so just manually adjust that) and really I'm just enjoying it right now. I am not being as technical as it is working as advertised at this point and she is providing me with excellent video gaming/movie/music listening/tv watching experiences. I still haven't broken down my separate pre set up and tried the l/R analog section to see if that has improved due to time constraints, but overall the UMC has taken a huge step forward with this update. Great job to Lonnie and the crew for jumping on the issues, taking the accountability, and releasing a remedy with a very good response time. These are great folks guys. Enjoy the UMC-1!
Adam

SUPER +1 to the Tenth Power