I'll go with Trevor on this one though. If you are contemplating that much, then don't go to cheap on the electronics. My Emo is fine, but if i had an extra $3k for kicks, i probably would have gotten something very different even though i would not have used a tenth of its abilities.
I have two thoughts on this:
1.
Emotive and Outlaw are two small companies which are trying their best to provide a quality products for a reasonable price. I believe they have talented engineers who are often a bit overoptimistic on how easy or how much time things will take. I trust Outlaw a lot more than I trust Emotive although they have pulled similar versions of stringing you along (moving release dates of products for years). Emotive, goes beyond this, knowingly releasing products before they are done. I can only guess they need to ship it in order to have enough money to finish it. This is not a great position to be in and it is especially telling that they have done this multiple times. This does not give me a warm and fuzzy feeling ... but
2.
The RMC-1 promises a 16 channel surround processor which can be expanded to 28 channels. I'll guess that a 28 channel unit would run just under $10k. If I was going to purchase one it would not be till I knew it was working and that people were reporting mainly happy things. I expect that will take a while but, in the meantime, I enjoy keeping an eye on it.
Now, to your suggestion ...
At this point in time, going with a higher quality more main stream company would mean a Tinnov Altitude32 or a JBL SDP-75 (basically a repackage Tinnov). Either would be well over $30k with the same number of channels. So, I'd love to take your advice (if you'd be kind enough to pay the difference)
The reason I created this thread was because I was excited that Emotive actually had a real channel expansion card. I was starting to think that I'd never see one. So, If they do pull it off, and people are happy, and I see no other competition in it's price range that i think is better ... I might buy one.
