I too am waiting for the UMC-1. As for dropping any of the sound quality? I do not think so. I have had upper end pre/pro in the past and there are differences between all. I sold my AVM 30 and swtiched to Classe and yes there were differences but can not say I lost any sound quality. I sold the Classe to down size and am looking the Emotiva. From what I hear/see/read this is going to be a great processor for the money. They use high quality parts. I bought the Rotel 1098 for over 2k and then switched to the Anthem AVM30 and it was the same money. My hears really opened up at the sound of the Anthem. I have great hopes for the Emo. I plan on one of the amps as well. Good Luck
What about Emotiva?
I have a decent 7.1 channel pre/pro, the Boston Acoustics AVP7, based on the same unit as the Sherwood-Newcastle 965, which was also the basis for the Outlaw 990. I could stay with this unit indefinitely except that it can't do HDMI switching or decode the new lossless codecs on Blu-ray discs. I could just get an Oppo BD-83, use its internal processor and plug its 7.1 channel analog outs into the AVP7, but for just $200 more I could get the new Emotiva UMC-1 AVP with HDMI switching and TrueHD and DTS-HD-MA decoding. Then I could just stick with my current PS3 as a Blu-ray player and finally extract the lossless codecs.
What I'm wondering is if I'd take a noticeable hit in overall sound quality. The Boston AVP was a $2K unit, though the Sherwood and Outlaw units were about half that.
What I'm wondering is if I'd take a noticeable hit in overall sound quality. The Boston AVP was a $2K unit, though the Sherwood and Outlaw units were about half that.