Considering where you are at w your system and money I would go solid state. I think if u went tube on your fronts the liklihood of getting sonic mismatches between fronts center and rears is high. If at some point u want a seperate HT from your 2 channel rig then I would look into tubes I have a tube pre and a solid state amp. Quite a few guys here do since it gives you the warmth and dimension of tubes with the bass slam of SS. Just my opinion of course.
so far, bad service with Emotiva
- Thread starter HUB SRT
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HUB SRT
Well-known member
Sounds great. I'll check it out. Who do you recommend for the tube pre amp?
You want an amp that is:
1. Inexpensive
2. Sounds Great
3. Company offers great Customer Service
You can pick two out of the three, but are unlikely to find all three in one product. You will be very lucky to find the first two together, and if you do the product will probably be used and old enough to be out of warranty anyway. Food for thought. Honestly, it is better to deal with subpar equipment for a longer period in order to save up more money to buy a better amp to hold onto for the long term.
It's normal that tracking number don't show up before the collection/before the package is processed at Fedex facility. Usually a contracted carrier like Fedex collects packets at some fixed time each day. Obviously the amp was not sent the day before, or it was sent too late (after Fedex collected packages) because the tracking number did not work yet. But what a mess, eager customers are in a hurry; consider that, Emo 
. I have ordered 3 times from Emotiva and every time the order was processed right away (a "privilege" for international customers - we have to make orders via email and thus they are processed right away) and the order left the same or during the next day. Tracking number always worked the next day after dispatch.
There are lots of amps besides Emotiva, but I'd say to top Emo at performance one would likely have to spend double the sum. However I would not consider anything less than XPA-1 for myself. Besides good stock performance, they make excellent modding base. "Regards, XPA-1 @ 50W Class A, 180,000µF PSU capacitance and upgraded signal caps."
I hope you find an amp that drives your Logans like they are supposed to be driven. I'd say stay out of tube amps, the ones that have enough power and current reserve are likely to cost too much for you. Maybe some hybrid design would be good for you, or a separate transistor power amp and tube pre. I actually like to keep the power amp section as transparent as possible and color the sound the way I like with pre amp, speakers and cabling. Good luck.
. I have ordered 3 times from Emotiva and every time the order was processed right away (a "privilege" for international customers - we have to make orders via email and thus they are processed right away) and the order left the same or during the next day. Tracking number always worked the next day after dispatch.There are lots of amps besides Emotiva, but I'd say to top Emo at performance one would likely have to spend double the sum. However I would not consider anything less than XPA-1 for myself. Besides good stock performance, they make excellent modding base. "Regards, XPA-1 @ 50W Class A, 180,000µF PSU capacitance and upgraded signal caps.
"I hope you find an amp that drives your Logans like they are supposed to be driven. I'd say stay out of tube amps, the ones that have enough power and current reserve are likely to cost too much for you. Maybe some hybrid design would be good for you, or a separate transistor power amp and tube pre. I actually like to keep the power amp section as transparent as possible and color the sound the way I like with pre amp, speakers and cabling. Good luck.
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Well I have a cary slp98p. It is stereo only. I love the cary. However they are not exactly cheap. 2k used or 4k new.
ilidra
Member
Couple years ago I ordered Emotiva XPA-2. First amp arived dead.Completly dead on both chanals. Emotiva send me another amp. Terible hum on rt.chanal. Sended back again. BAd experiance. I purshased defferent brand after that and forget Emotiva.
DrJRapp
Well-known member
As a Post Script to my earlier comments I have been trying to reach Dan L the owner of Emotiva for a couple of months. He comes on to the thread I wrote on their own forum and says that he hasn't gotten any calls and the problem has been taken care of in his opinion, then the thread gets pulled. This is professionalism Emotiva style.
HUB SRT
Well-known member
I appreciate everyone's feed back. I'm looking at a anthem ma-20
danvu
Well-known member
I would like to share my experience with Emotiva too.
With sales/customer service, I didn't have any problem at all, though I did feel a little attitude from one of the lady there. All items I ordered there, 2 upa1's and a sub12 and some cables, were shipped and arrived as promised. I talked to one guy there on the phone and he seemed nice but gave me some bogus answer when I questioned their product quality. Oh yeah, about their tracking number, when they first gave or email, I looked up on fedex and they were blank too. But at the end of the same day, as fedex picked up the items, they updated with info. So you just have to way a bit. Don't be so impatient
Now, about their products, you can definitely tell they have small cheap details/roots. The amps sound great, no problems on that; but I have problems with the biding posts. One amp, I could push my banana plugs all the way in. However, the other amp, one binding post, I could only push half way in without using force. The other 3 posts, I had to push really hard to make go in half way. And all 4 of them only go half way in, can't go any further. I also tried spades connectors, as my speaker cables allowing switching btw banana plug and spade, but the terminals were to close together and the + and - spade connectors would almost touch each other and not safe at all. I tried other brand banana plugs and they had the same problem. I asked the guy at Emo about this and he said their binding posts were standard and should work with all connection types. What a bs! How come one amp has no problems and the other one has? Same amp. So I had to settle with banana plugs half way in since it doesn't really affect the sound and the connections are tight enough.
The cables appear to have good construction but still feel a bit cheap and the outer gold plated surface has some rusty spots already.
With sales/customer service, I didn't have any problem at all, though I did feel a little attitude from one of the lady there. All items I ordered there, 2 upa1's and a sub12 and some cables, were shipped and arrived as promised. I talked to one guy there on the phone and he seemed nice but gave me some bogus answer when I questioned their product quality. Oh yeah, about their tracking number, when they first gave or email, I looked up on fedex and they were blank too. But at the end of the same day, as fedex picked up the items, they updated with info. So you just have to way a bit. Don't be so impatient
Now, about their products, you can definitely tell they have small cheap details/roots. The amps sound great, no problems on that; but I have problems with the biding posts. One amp, I could push my banana plugs all the way in. However, the other amp, one binding post, I could only push half way in without using force. The other 3 posts, I had to push really hard to make go in half way. And all 4 of them only go half way in, can't go any further. I also tried spades connectors, as my speaker cables allowing switching btw banana plug and spade, but the terminals were to close together and the + and - spade connectors would almost touch each other and not safe at all
. I tried other brand banana plugs and they had the same problem. I asked the guy at Emo about this and he said their binding posts were standard and should work with all connection types. What a bs! How come one amp has no problems and the other one has? Same amp. So I had to settle with banana plugs half way in since it doesn't really affect the sound and the connections are tight enough. The cables appear to have good construction but still feel a bit cheap and the outer gold plated surface has some rusty spots already.
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Last week I ordered a UPA-1 (yup, just one) to replace a Parasound mono amp that was running my Stage center channel. I ordered the amp on Monday and had it in my system on Wednesday. It seems to be reasonably well made to me for the price, and I think it sounds a little better than the Parasound (which was 10 years old).
I didn't have to personally deal with anyone, but the automated transaction flowed just fine. Since signature was required and FedX always comes while I am at work, I was even able to use the tracking number to change the delivery to a FedX Kinkos that's on my way home, so no hassles with missed delivery and driving to the FedX distribution center, which is 25 minutes in the opposite direction.
Happy so far.
Chuck
I didn't have to personally deal with anyone, but the automated transaction flowed just fine. Since signature was required and FedX always comes while I am at work, I was even able to use the tracking number to change the delivery to a FedX Kinkos that's on my way home, so no hassles with missed delivery and driving to the FedX distribution center, which is 25 minutes in the opposite direction.
Happy so far.
Chuck
DrJRapp
Well-known member
I agree that their automated system works just fine...It's their people that are messed up. I guess when you pay poorly and can't hire the brightest bulbs in the box that sort of things are going to happen. But the real problem seems to stem from poor leadership. The president of the company is not a man of his word and says one thing when his intention is different than his word. This flows down through the entire organization. I tried contacting him 4 times in writing and twice by phone call (both I have documentation of) only to have him have the audacity to come onto the thread and say he never heard anything from me and therefore everything must be OK. Psychologists call this denial, I just call it outright lies.
Enjoy your UPA1..it is an excellent sounding amp ...be careful of the input RCAs because they are flimsey and just pressure fit into the chassis. I hope it works well for you because getting it fixed MAY be a hassel if it ever breaks.
Enjoy your UPA1..it is an excellent sounding amp ...be careful of the input RCAs because they are flimsey and just pressure fit into the chassis. I hope it works well for you because getting it fixed MAY be a hassel if it ever breaks.
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Bernard
Well-known member
That's bad design, and a recipe for trouble.
Hocky
Well-known member
.... it is $300.....
Bernard
Well-known member
I was not aware of that, but then if you buy something that's built to that price point and it breaks down, it's usually more expensive to fix than to buy a new unit, so you dump it and buy something more expensive. No savings in that.
5 year transferable warranty takes care of that pretty good. But I concur, ther RCA sockets should not be PCB mounted but mounted directly to the back plate of the chassis (or they should at least use some higher quality PCB-mounted sockets, if they are available). They are not hard to replace though, I have changed XLR sockets of the XPA-1s into these.
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squasher100
Well-known member
I know other people have had issues with them, but I just helped a friend set up a home theater using the emotiva amp/processor and when we had an issue they send out the replacement right away.
gordonmenninger
Well-known member
As with pretty much everything you get in life, "you get what you pay for". Emotiva is cheap crap made in china and imported by a company in america. That's it.
I needed an amp for my rear ML Scenario's a couple of years ago and I ordered a cheap $400 Emo amp and it worked fine during the time I had it, but sound quality was nothing great at all... I just needed something for a short time before I came to my senses and changed ALL of my amplification in my HT to KRELL. Anyway, the emotiva was pretty light weight and build quality was poor. It looked and felt cheap. Binding posts were flexible and RCA inputs were wiggling. I had the amp for about 5 months and then sold it online.
I was also on the waiting list a few years ago when they announced their surround processor UMC-1. Shipping dates were constantly postponed for what seemed like over a year, promises by the heads of emo were being made that were not kept, excused were made by the loyal emotiva heads and nothing ever came of it during the time I considered / waited for this thing to be released. At that time there was even talk of an Xmc-1 processor that was supposed to be released with in a few months (that was over 2 years ago!~) which supposedly featured XLR and better internals, etc.. This thing still has not been released!
I got fed up and told emo to keep their crappy preorder and bought a Krell S1200U processor and never looked back!
You are way better off to buy a used quality component on Agon for a bit more $ than to go with a cheaply made, inferior asian product with bad customer service. My money spends anywhere and it definitely is not with Emotiva! done.
I needed an amp for my rear ML Scenario's a couple of years ago and I ordered a cheap $400 Emo amp and it worked fine during the time I had it, but sound quality was nothing great at all... I just needed something for a short time before I came to my senses and changed ALL of my amplification in my HT to KRELL. Anyway, the emotiva was pretty light weight and build quality was poor. It looked and felt cheap. Binding posts were flexible and RCA inputs were wiggling. I had the amp for about 5 months and then sold it online.
I was also on the waiting list a few years ago when they announced their surround processor UMC-1. Shipping dates were constantly postponed for what seemed like over a year, promises by the heads of emo were being made that were not kept, excused were made by the loyal emotiva heads and nothing ever came of it during the time I considered / waited for this thing to be released. At that time there was even talk of an Xmc-1 processor that was supposed to be released with in a few months (that was over 2 years ago!~) which supposedly featured XLR and better internals, etc.. This thing still has not been released!
I got fed up and told emo to keep their crappy preorder and bought a Krell S1200U processor and never looked back!
You are way better off to buy a used quality component on Agon for a bit more $ than to go with a cheaply made, inferior asian product with bad customer service. My money spends anywhere and it definitely is not with Emotiva! done.
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