Upgrade Emotiva UMC-1 to Firmware 7.04.19 11/17/2011
Just upgrade my UMC-1 firmware and amazed at the difference. The bass to the front speakers is awesome. Specifically, listening to music with just my Bose 901 on the UMC-1 "direct" mode setting is incredible. After several hours of playing music, I decided that i need to revisit my Front Speaker cross over frequency and adjust more bass frequencies away from my sub, Paradigm 3400, to the Bose 901 front speakers. I ended up changing from 80 HZ crossover to 70 HZ.
Still, I find myself toggling back to Direct (no sub) when listening to Adele and other songs that tend not to need loud deep bass as the mid-high bass has better imaging with the Bose 901. I am still considering pushing even more bass frequency to the Bose 901s, bass sounds good down to 40 HZ crossover frequency. So I know I will end up between 70 HZ and 40 HZ as the sweet spot.
From what i can tell, it appears that prior to this latest firmware, if you switched from Stereo to Direct, the Emotiva UMC-1 did not switch the front speakers to Large/full frequency. Thus Direct sound like the same as Stereo with the Sub powered off.
My original post claimed the UPA-2 was not powerful enough to drive the Bose 901 speakers, and that the sound was very bright with no bass. However, I now expect the brightness was emphasized by the UMC-1 not sending lower frequencies.