Here's a different way of looking at it, in an attempt to not repeat myself!
Oppo. I bought the '95 a few months after it came out, and was very impressed. But I was using the volume function on it and it only had 25 steps on the volume control I believe. I was unsatisfied with this, and read that others were too. Oppo's rep is such that they listen to customer's feedback, and in short order the next firmware that came out gave the Oppo 100 steps(going off memory since I don't use the volume any more). Now that is customer service.
Emotiva had a similar opportunity to serve and impress the customer when their XDA-1 DAC with digital volume came out. I was among the first to receive, and the volume was almost unusable for a pre-amp, which is one of the features Emotiva proudly proclaimed for the XDA-1. On their forum, most who used the volume feature found it lacking, it would step off of zero and quickly ramp up so very loud levels were achieved at 7-10 out of 80 steps, and you couldn't use more than 15-20 steps based on the level of the recording. So very large increases were achieved with one single step louder. Much worse than the Oppo volume for instance.
It was surprising that this made it past quality control it was that unusable. Emotiva's solution was to admit no flaw in the firmware. They offered to let owners send in the DAC at owner's cost if they wanted an adjustment to the volume, which would at least be done for free, as the return shipping. So you'd be without the unit for 2-3 weeks, out $20+ bucks for shipping all to get what you were promised in the first place, a DAC that could be used as a digital pre-amp. They also initially said it could do 24/192 over USB and had lossless volume, both of which turned out to be flat wrong, and they admitted the lossless volume only at the end when the XDA-1 was discontinued and they were clearing them out!
Yesterday I ordered a Oppo 103 on their store page. Through a miscue of my own, I was on their records as trying to make 2 separate purchases of the unit, the first attempt having no payment and the second having the wrong email address. I had no idea what had gone wrong and their office then closed for the weekend. I sorted through my situation and sent a detailed email this morning, Saturday, when they are closed as well. Within a couple of hours someone in their office had sorted out the situation, corrected my email address, and shipped the unit, emailing me with a detailed explanation of what I had done wrong.
Now that is service. Compare it to the earlier poster who tried to have a DAC shipped on christmas eve. Let's be honest, Emotiva has a ways to go.
