Why can't Pass Labs, McIntosh or Krell have a sale like that?
"Made in Chinese sweatshop"
vs
"Hand-Made right here in America"
For one.
There's also the advertising they have to pay dealer markup, and primary end-user's wallets to consider. They do often perform better too, although the amount of speakers in the world that would benefit from a Krell over an XPA-1 for example could be counted on one hand. Sometimes they will have discrete power supplies instead of shared power supplies, resulting in less channel crosstalk. And some of those are pure class A designs so they will require a ton of heatsinking whereas emotivas are usually only class A biased for a infinitesimal part of their power.
For what it is though, the UPA-7 is an
absolute steal. Pretty much does stabily 140wpc into 2 channels / 8 ohms and around 120wpc ACD into an 8 ohm load and great performance into 4 ohms? That could be many people's last ever amplifier!
And if I was making an active tri-amped system right now, I would bite on this so easy... Unfortunately I'm broke