In an effort to get into more homes, Emotiva Audio Corporation is getting out there. Where exactly? Well, into the hands of dealers, as well as into a variety of retail venues.
Emotiva used to exclusively sell direct to the consumer. However, if you're partial to buying up all of your AV on Amazon, the company doesn't want to deny those shoppers. The company just announced plans to make all of its electronics available to dealers for sale at retail, both online and through brick and mortar locations. Of course, Emotiva will also continue to sell products in the company's online store.
That means you can now buy Emotiva products, including stereo and multichannel amplifiers, preamp/processors, Digital-to-Analog Converters (DACs), powered speakers, and more almost anywhere.
"Since we first established Emotiva 11 years ago, dealers have continually expressed interest in carrying the brand, but until now it would have been challenging to do so without raising our prices at retail," said Dan Laufman, president of Emotiva. "However, the combination of scale and our U.S. manufacturing initiative, which allowed us to return manufacture of new and upcoming products to our facility in Tennessee, allows us to increase efficiencies without affecting quality, making it possible to bring Emotiva to consumers who prefer to buy audio at retail."
Now that you know where to buy, here's what you can buy---a pair of brand new DACs. Emotiva just debuted the Big Ego and Little Ego USB digital-to-analog converters. Each one is designed to pump up the audio from a variety of digital sources, including laptops.
The Big Ego actually has a big formal name, the Big Ego Precision 32/384 USB Digital to Analog Converter. Despite that lengthy title, this compact device measures a mere 5.38-by-2-by-0.75 inches. That small package can produce some big sound. Just connect the device to any computer with an external USB audio source. From there, it will play any audio file that can be played on a PC, but with better sound, thanks to an internal headphone amplifier or the dedicated Toslink and line-level outputs.
Other features include three different digital interpolation filters (Symmetrical, Asymmetrical Low Damping, and Asymmetrical High Damping), as well as a low-impedance, direct coupled headphone output. It should also be noted that while most Mac computers can handle outputs up to 384kHz, if you're a Windows user and you want to play high-resolution files (up to 384k), you will need to install the free Emotiva Big Ego drivers for Windows.
The Little Ego DAC packs a headphone/line output into a super portable package. Measuring 4.75-by-1.75-by-0.62 inches, this model drops the dedicated analog line output/Toslink output. However, it does have the same essential signal processing as its big brother, the Big Ego.
"An entire generation of music lovers have very little understanding of how full and rich music should really sound," says Laufman. "Earbuds and digital compression are useful tools, but they have drastically lowered the bar for audio. Big Ego and Little Ego are designed to restore sonics to their full potential, returning detail, texture, harmonics and other highly desirable "analog" characteristics to digital audio sources. It's a very big step."
Emotiva is selling the Big Ego and the Little Ego now, priced at $229 and $169, respectively.
