Emotiva equipmet, how good is it?

I  had an Emotiva XDA dac.  It was the brightest and thinness sounding piece of crap I ever heard.  You get what you pay for.  The worst were the very bright and ugly led’s. It could burn holes in your eyeballs.  Never again, I got conned

My experience was similar to yours for the XDA-1.  Somewhat thin and bright sounding which made it harsh at higher volumes.  

Emotiva said it had lossless volume when it first came out so I bought it for preamp duties.  But when I auditioned it the volume ramped up so fast from zero to 15(out of 80 steps or so) that it was too loud at this point depending on the music being played.

Emotiva did fix this, by changing the firmware, but then they public ally admitted  that it didn’t have lossless volume, which makes it useless as a pre.  Which is the reason I bought it.   And this is on top of it being bright sounding.

it became clear to me that they didn’t really know what they were doing.   Their flagship 2 channel pre was delayed two or 3 years and with one delay announcement Lonnie said that when paired with the XDA, the soundstage collapsed, so they needed to rework things.  

Either they didn’t have control of the design process, or worse still, they did with the screw ups being directly their fault.

at the end of the day, Dan L. Is a businessman first, making deals and cutting costs.  He doesn’t design anything and pays people mostly in China to design and make whatever at a certain price point.

i prefer Schiit Audio these days because the founders design their own stuff, and obviously know what they are doing.  The dacs, headphone amps and amplifiers all work as intended with no surprises after the fact.  I’d advise the OP to put them on the short list as well.

Interesting how some people find the Emotive XDA-1 bright, but I never did. I would say it was brighter sounding than the XDA-2 but never harsh or too bright. I cannot stand a bright sound or any speakers with a harsh high end. For instance Klipsch speakers come to mind. Several of my friends have them and I cannot listen to them for a long period of time before fatigue sets in. In fact many speakers with a metal dome tweeter, I find to be too bright for me. 

I did audition a couple of the Schitt DACs a while back but I preferred the Emotiva XDA-2.

By the way the XDA-2 does have a lossless volume control so it can be used as a preamp but the XDA-1 does not and should never be used as a preamp.  

FYI to the OP, the XDA-2 is long out of production. Their current dac may be better.

LJG, you must understand, when Emotiva was selling the XDA-1, they were calling it a digital preamp, and marketing it as such. Doesn’t that seem just a little wrong headed??  Also, you dismiss Schiit Audio but have obviously not tried more than one or two models or versions of their DACs,  or else you would have at least mentioned one such model.

they currently offer 7 separate models.  The multibit stuff they have is amazing to me.   When I tried the entry level Modi Uber, I immediately realized it was superior to the XDA dac.  So I upgraded to the Bifrost Multibit and the detail it gives with warmth is something Emotiva could never achieve.  Ymmv.

I realize the XDA-2 is out of production, besides the OP was asking about Emotiva amps. I only stated my experience with an Emotiva product because he was curious about quality of their products. 

I did not dismiss Schitt DACs, I only said I tried a couple a while ago and heard no better sound quality with them. The XDA-2 and the Schitt DACs were very similar in sound quality. I never said they were bad. I only tried them because my son was auditioning different DACs and asked me if I wanted to compare them to my DAC before he sends them back. I really don't remember the models, I would have to ask my son.     

When I purchased the XDA-1 they cautioned me that the volume should be kept at maximum, I believe, and only use a preamp for volume control or sound quality would be degraded. I believe it said that in the manual. I did not realize they were marketing it as a preamp also. Maybe that was before I bought mine. However,  the XDA-2 can be used as a preamp because it uses a resistive ladder volume control, which does not degrade the sound quality.

Anyway, I just wanted to describe my experience with one of their products.

I had a pair of XPA 1L trying to power my Maggie 1.7 speakers after about 7 returns to the factory for service I switched to a Parasound integrated it was a dramatic improvement in quality, and musicality and never a problem.