Home Theater – champagne taste on a beer budget

Emotiva by far supplies the best bang for your buck audio gear.  Maybe I’m making a bad assumption, but I think most tech people like myself are also interesting in gadgets and home theater equipment. If you are planning on updating, or possibly installing your first ever home theater, you have to check these guys out.  Emotiva’s 5 year warranty and business model is a winning combination for the customer as well. They offer an impressive 40% discount when upgrading your gear to the future generation of processors. Take a look at their “Why Buy” page. Below is a list of items I reviewed before making my purchase:

Amplifiers

  1. UPA series – great power, at an unbeatable price
  2. XPA series – even more power, slightly higher

AV Processors

  1. UMC-1 – in line with the UPA series amps
  2. XMC-1 – higher end processor due to be out this summer

In my mind I can justify spending a little more money on a good processor and amplifier.  Think about it. These are the few pieces of gear that won’t be outdated as fast as our PCs. Speakers too fall into this category. So tell the wife this stuff won’t have to be replaced for years!

I researched equipment for a few months before I pulled the trigger on ordering my new AV gear. Quite frankly I couldn’t have had better customer service experience. When doing research of your own take into account the ohm rating of your speakers. You don’t want to make the mistake of pairing them with an under powered amp. Hungry for information? Swing over to audioholics.com and read some reviews there.  It is an excellent starting point.

Now you may think “this isn’t a damn beer budget”, the heading is misleading. But really the quality of Emotiva’s products rivals stuff three times the price.

Oh and one last thing. If you can’t wait for the XMC-1 processor to arrive, take a hard look at using a Denon AVR-2809CI as your processor.