Emotiva or affordable high-end
We all hunt for the same thing, when it comes to AV: We want something that’s ‘affordable but sounds great’. With that in mind, our latest addition is right up of all those peoples alley. The answer is Emotiva.
So what exactly is there to be excited about when it comes to Emotiva?
If you keep half an eye on product reviews, you will have seen the Emotiva brand name mentioned here and there. And yes, that is a mention in not only a good way, but often in a five star-way.
When Emotiva started out, they had one goal: to offer exceptionally designed, high performance products at prices that more people could afford and enjoy. Emotiva asked a simple question: “Why can’t we have amazing audio and video sound at prices that don’t threaten our mortgage?”
I assume, you are nodding at this, just as we are.
As high-end audio chased an ever-shrinking market with ever-more-costly gear, the price of sonic nirvana shot out of reach for many AV enthousiast. The good people from Emotiva decided to do something about it.
Emotiva runs a lean organization comprised of true audio enthusiasts, engineers, and product specialists. Everyone in the company, from the engineering team, to the manufacturing group, to the support staff, has your ultimate home entertainment experience in mind. Every single one of their people are passionate enthusiasts who enjoy the experience of using Emotiva products equally as much as designing and building them.
Emotiva is also painfully aware that there is a direct correlation between manufacturing cost and retail price. Their lean business model and reasonable mark-ups guarantees the best possible value for customers.
‘Cool’, we hear you say, ‘but what do I get out of that?’
Emotiva is known for a line-up that features real, raw power without stratospheric pricing that’s out of reach for mortal men. In fact, all the Emotiva amplifiers have nearly textbook performance specs. But you and I both know to look beyond the specs.
The company doesn’t pussyfoot around. As a matter of fact, they are pretty bold in what they have to say to their potential customers: ‘Go ahead. Look around. Compare Emotiva products to the competition. You’ll find anything remotely comparable costs several times the price. This goes for any metric: sonic and visual performance, aesthetics, design, quality and finish. For quality at this price point, we’re the only choice.’
Emotiva offerings include preamps and surround processors; monoblock, stereo, and multichannel amplifiers; digital-to-analog converters for computer audiophiles; and speakers, all developed internally. A line of Emotiva Pro professional audio products also includes powered studio monitors in several sizes.
Initially, the company first caught attention with the level of excellence and the value for money they achieved with their two channel products.
The road they travelled with their multi-channelled home theatre products was a little bit rockier.
When their multi-channel home theatre products failed to impress in the same way their 2-channel products did, they took what they had learned, went back to the drawing table and started again from scratch; until they had it absolutely right.
It’s that perseverance that helped them deliver on their initial intention: exceptional high-end quality AV at an affordable price.
So much so that the company’s AV preamp/processor, the XMC-1, found itself in the enviable position of being one of the most hotly debated, highly anticipated, and most talked-about AV products on the AV forums, well before it actually saw the light of day.
The preamp was designed from the ground up so that Emotivas engineers would have absolute control over every component–not only in terms of the hardware, but the software as well.
The point is that the XMC-1 is a righteously feature-packed 7.2-channel AV processor that manages to impress.
At this stage, many of the Emotiva products are manufactured in China. Nothing special about that, these days. But the company decided to manufacture, design and engineer the XMC-1 Pre-Processor, XPA Gen3 Amplifiers, and Ego DACs in their production facility in the USA. The plan is to bring all manufacturing in-house in the next few years.
But let’s have a quick look at the variety of products on offer. Emotiva has 3 different product ranges:
- The X Series; a range of exceptional music and home theatre system electronics for the discerning listener – Emotivas finest products that take on the “best” of the best without breaking the budget. This includes amps, processors, pre-amps, dacs ands CD-players.
- The Airmotiv Series; a range of top-notch speakers and powered “Pro” monitors for your home music and theatre system, or the studio.
- The BasX Series; Emotivas most affordable, no compromise series of electronics and speakers for music or home theatre systems.
On a final note, we would like to throw a few noteworthy stand-outs at you. We already mentioned the multi-award winning XMC-1 that shook the audiophile world.
The mighty RMC-1 AV processor is the new mothership that was finally landed at CEDIA 2017, sporting 16 total channels (including sub). This is Emotiva’s new flagship and it is a massively disruptive device thanks to its unprecedented price. With the RMC-1, you will get features that were previously the exclusive domain of processors that cost as much as a very nice new car. But when it becomes available early next year and you have a few grand to spend on a processor, you no longer have to settle for a rehashed AVR. For example, you get hi-res Dirac Live at 192 kHz on all channels. Just saying….
Other products that deserve a mention are the XPA-Gen3 amplifiers, a series of highly flexible modular power amps that stand out because of their high-tech Class H power supply topology (Class H amplifiers are a variation on the class AB circuit design but with improved efficiency and … of course, with a higher cost) which floors its users with its extremely powerful performance, good frequency balance and low distortion.
You can choose to configure the Gen 3 amplifier to accommodate anywhere from 1 to now 11 channels for the ultimate Atmos experience. The new XPA-9 Gen 3 amp (that will be availble very soon, date TBC) for example features five 300 Watt Single-Channel Amplifier Modules and two of our 65-Watt Two Channel Amplifier Modules for a total of five channels at 300 Watts/channel and four channels at 65 Watts/channel. And that’s just the beginning!
The BasX stereo amplifiers on the other end are Class AB circuit amplifiers. Class AB amplifiers combines the best of Class A and Class B in order to create an amplifier without the drawbacks of either. Most budget- to midprice amps and receivers are Class D circuit designs, a low cost, high efficiency option that is generally speaking less favoured by audiophiles because of variable sound quality.
And while audio enthusiasts may be familiar with the value proposition of the company’s amplifiers, the passive Emotiva Airmotiv speakers are newer and less well known. The Emotiva speakers deliver stellar performance for their price. Emotiva has been shaking up the electronics market for a while. Word out there is that they are going to do the same to the loudspeaker market.
So much more could be said about the Emotiva products, but I think you catch our drift. The thing to do is, to go out and do some research for yourself. Obviously, when you are ready for your demo, we’ll be there for you.
Sources: Emotiva, Home theatre review, Sound and Vision, Audioholics, AVSforum