I mentioned in another post that I would post impressions of the DMR-1 once I had a chance to play with it. Emotiva no longer makes the DMR-1, but have some B-Stock ones on sale for $850 shipped. Here are my thoughts.
Packaging – Not double, but tripled boxed with thick foam. It’s more than adequate to protect the receiver during shipment.
Build Quality – As you would expect from Emotiva; solid as a rock. When I took the receiver out of its cloth bag, it had that expensive look. The receiver has two fans inside, but I could only hear the fans if I were within a few feet of the receiver on mute. Although this is a B-Stock item, I couldn’t find a thing wrong with it.
Remote – Finally a decent remote packaged with a receiver. Emotiva opted to use an URC remote; excellent choice. I wanted to see if my own Harmony 550 would control the DMR-1 and it does. Set the inter-key delay to zero and it works without a hitch.
Features – Although your typical Japanese-flavored receiver will have more features, the DMR-1 sports enough for my taste. It has jazz and party modes as well as your typical Dolby and DTS modes. The OSD is simple and well-laid out. I do have a couple of gripes. First, the sub crossover can’t be set for channels individually. Left and right lump together which isn’t a big deal, but the center and surrounds are also lumped together which could present a problem. For example, if you have three bookshelf speakers upfront and decide to get Orbs for the back, you have to set the crossover pretty high for the surrounds and center. Second, the panel dim doesn’t remember to stay off when you turn the receiver off and on again. A lot of glowing lights flash on the DMR-1 and I’d rather have just the digital display lit and you can do that, but once you turn the receiver off and on the lights turn on again.
Connectivity – The DMR-1 does have HDMI (video switching only) and plenty of connectivity using other connections. It also has not 1 or 2, but 3 subwoofer outs. The DMR-1 also has 8-channel analog bypass inputs and I did see a phono input.
Service and Warranty – A full 5-year warranty on this B-stock item and it does count towards the 40% upgrade plan according to Lonnie at Emotiva. Customer services is what you would expect from Emotiva; excellent.
Sound – The DMR-1 uses a 125x7 digital amplifier and a toroid power supply so it’s expected this receiver will deliver power and it does. However, it doesn’t appear to deliver loads more power in two-channel listening than my own Cambridge Audio receiver which puts out about 80 watts into six channels and 100 into two channels. I also didn’t hear large differences in sound which was surprising as class D and AB amps consist of different designs. The differences I could hear were improvements in clarity, dynamics, and bass response. I did not notice any harshness or rolling-off of the highs. This is a testament to how far class D amplifiers have already come as this amp sounded as good as its AB cousins and uses about half the power to do it.
Overall, I’d say the DMR-1 is one great receiver. There’s little to complain about. Great looking receiver with great sound and decent amount of features. Plus, I’m sure the DMR-1 will put out its rated power output when run in 5.1/7.1 where most other receivers will start choking. That alone is worth a few more bucks to me. I’ll be sad to see this receiver go into someone else’s rack.
