Emotiva Forum?

mmadden28

I try to stay out of these kinds of discussions but here's some of my 'bystander' views:

I'll use Emotiva as an example here, since its the topic of discussion, but this could apply to just about any brand.

Some new users come here because they have Polk speakers. They've likely heard about Emotiva's amps. They ask the question at Emotiva and some will say to go to the Polk Forums to ask about specifics on the Polk Speakers. So they do.

On the other hand it seems some new users come to CP First with a specific question about Emotiva amps, not necessarily related to the speakers, where they could have in fact at least tried at Emotivalounge first.

Or, perhaps the new user doesn't bother to try and search first at CP before posting thier question, or perhaps maybe they tried but couldn't find any results or maybe not specific to thier rig. Or maybe all that they found was several years old and may or may not be relevant anymore.

After all the Search function on this forum does suck-for example you can't search for anything with less than 4 characters and it can't contain puctuation-thus it makes it difficult to search for XPA or XPA-2, LSI, LSi-9, etc. the only way to do it would be to search google.com (restricting the domain to polkaudio.com) but that's not obvious. If I'm wrong about this educate me.

As far as myself. I will recommend what I have experience with or regurgutate what others have praised which seems to be a well accepted option. It wouldn't be right of me to recommend an amp or product that I really don't have face time with right? I'd relay my experiences with my setup for my budget.

No I'm not being defensive thinking that any of this thread or comments were directed at me in any--Now I like my Emotiva stuff, but I'm no fanboy (fanboy defined to me as one with blind, sometimes fanatical, and one-sided devotion) . I tell it like it is-I don't make excuses for any shortcomings of a product, nor do I try to make it a point to point out shortcomings of equipment everytime either (unless its relevant to the topic).

I agree with what Kex said about going to another forum to get an unbiased opinion on a product. You simply CANNOT get an unbiased opinion on Emotiva products at the Emotivalounge except from a very select few. So where to go for a lesser bias if you own Polk speakers? My choice? CP.

I personally tap CP because of the vast knowledge contained by the users on this forum. I respect that there is such a diversity of equipment ownership (even those that don't even have Polk speakers any more) and that there is such a majority of unbiased opinions on equipment. Or if majority is not the right term, at least enough opinions to at least balance the overall bias.

I think Lessisnevermore and hit it on the head with the fact that Emo's lineup has rapidly grown recently, had a great sale over the holiday, is affordable, and has been the recipient of several recent reviews and professional accolades.
I wasn't here then, but I would imagine that when the PS3 and Xbox360 were released that they were the topic of hot discussions even though they likely had nothing to do with Polk Speakers.

You can't create a sub-forum for Emotiva at Club Polk-that's absurd
Creating a sub-forum for LSI or RTi or even SDA? OK- hmmm. Nahh if it hasn't been done by now...

On the subject of products brought up time and time again that some might be tired of hearing about and should go to thier user forums instead and not discuss on CP:
Bluejeans cables
Monoprice
Monster
Signal Cable
Adcom
NAD
PS3
Xbox360
etc, etc, etc
Are we to identify all the over stated products that work well with Polk speakers and avoid mentioning them?
If you want to recommend another prioduct than what is mentioned in what looks like a fanboy thread, then do so.

Perhaps some more sticky threads may elimiate some of the repeated questions.

Come on please. Open Forums-Open Discussions-No censorship (within forum rules anyway).

Peace :cool:
P.S. I don't have a flak jacket-so have mercy on me

broncsrule21@

"After all the Search function on this forum does suck-for example you can't search for anything with less than 4 characters and it can't contain puctuation-thus it makes it difficult to search for XPA or XPA-2, LSI, LSi-9, etc. the only way to do it would be to search google.com (restricting the domain to polkaudio.com) but that's not obvious. If I'm wrong about this educate me."

x2

cfrizz

LOL! Nice post Mmadden!

shack

broncsrule21@ wrote: »

"After all the Search function on this forum does suck-for example you can't search for anything with less than 4 characters and it can't contain puctuation-thus it makes it difficult to search for XPA or XPA-2, LSI, LSi-9, etc. the only way to do it would be to search google.com (restricting the domain to polkaudio.com) but that's not obvious. If I'm wrong about this educate me."

x2

A quick search of Club Polk Forum for xpa* gave me 68 threads. Not hard at all.

heiney9

Hmmm.....I just searched "Emotiva" and got 500 hits on CP. Sure, you might have to actually spend some time and do some research, but there is a LOAD of information.

Everyone wants the quick answer and rarely bothers to search for any answers. When I first started researching DAC's on the internet it took me about 2 months to gather info to make a decision. That's how an intelligent, high dollar decision should be made.

It's probably THE biggest gripe of ANY online forum................no one uses the search feature. Sure the one here takes a bit of trial and error but I've never had any problems with it.

The search feature is your friend.

shack

Another quick search for lsi9 was 500 results (the maximum the search function will show). There is nothing difficult about the Club Polk Forum search fucntion...you just need to know how to use it. If you have a three letter item you want to search just add a * and it will find it. It is like this on most forum seach functions.

heiney9

shack wrote: »

Another quick search for lsi9 was 500 results (the maximum the search function will show). There is nothing difficult about the Club Polk Forum search fucntion...you just need to know how to use it. If you have a three letter item you want to search just add a * and it will find it. It is like this on most forum seach functions.

You forgot to add that they will actually need to read the threads/posts and spend some time researching what I would assume is an answer to a very important question(s).

cfrizz

Then after actually reading all of those responses, will come on and re-ask the question anyway since what he read didn't give him the answer he WANTED to read. So he asks absolutely sure that he will get an answer that he wants to see!

After reading 500 results saying the very opposite of that, the answers given just have to be wrong & he will get the correct answer if he asks again. LOL!

inspiredsports

All are obviously welcome here but I think some who've been around for a while hope for more informed / less repetitive questions.

This should be a "Sticky", but I don't know if polkaudio.com wants to "endorse" google.com.

However, I am an Internet Developer specializing in Search Optimization and I believe google.com is the best.

######################################

HERE'S WHAT YOU DO . . .
- - - Go to www.google.com
- - - In the search box type . . . emotiva site: polkaudio.com

(there should technically be no space between "site:" and "polkaudio.com" above, but if I show it that way it gets interpreted by the forum software and published as a Smiley Face.)

######################################

This unleashes the outstanding search capacity for "emotiva" (or whatever you want to find) ONLY on the "site": "polkaudio.com"

When I try this hundreds and hundreds of Club Polk postings about Emotiva are found.

shack

inspiredsports wrote: »

All are obviously welcome here but I think some who've been around for a while hope for more informed / less repetitive questions.

This should be a "Sticky", but I don't know if polkaudio.com wants to "endorse" google.com.

However, I am an Internet Developer specializing in Search Optimization and I believe google.com is the best.

######################################

HERE'S WHAT YOU DO . . .
- - - Go to www.google.com
- - - In the search box type . . . emotiva site: polkaudio.com

(there should technically be no space between "site:" and "polkaudio.com" above, but if I show it that way it gets interpreted by the forum software and published as a Smiley Face.)

######################################

This unleashes the outstanding search capacity for "emotiva" (or whatever you want to find) ONLY on the "site": "polkaudio.com"

When I try this hundreds and hundreds of Club Polk postings about Emotiva are found.

Why go through all of that when all you have to do is type emotiva in the search box on CLUB POLK and you get the last 500 posts with emotiva mentitoned in them?

Gaara

heiney9 wrote: »

Here's how it works...........a1 is an Emotiva supporter. You say some unflattering things in regards to Emo and he automatically thinks it's an affront against him personally. When in fact no one has so much as peeped in his direction.

Now we're all bad juju guru's and Messiahs. Par for the course

Makes sense. You say you don't like my gear, thats fightin words. To hell with everyone being able express a opinion, I mean its not like this is a forum or anything.

Inspired, its a really nice trick to know, but less applicable here. I use that one all the time for searching on sites that don't let you search, or trying to find exact phrases. Works GREAT with sites like Agon or Ebay w/ google cache, you can pull up old expired ads and see what items sold for, or if someone is being a scumbag and changed something on you.

inspiredsports

shack wrote: »

Why go through all of that when all you have to do is type emotiva in the search box on CLUB POLK and you get the last 500 posts with emotiva mentitoned in them?

I guess "emotiva" is a bad example. I've seen many people express the opinion (and someone in one of the posts above) that the forum's search function is less than stellar.

I've found Google is rarely, if ever, less than stellar; therefore, the recommendation.

mmadden28

shack wrote: »

A quick search of Club Polk Forum for xpa* gave me 68 threads. Not hard at all.

I didn't try the *. Thanks for that!-anytime in the past I asked about that or mentioned an issue with the search function nobody jumped in to help out and explain it. I actually may have stumbled on it before by trying different wildcards, but using it would return way too many useless hits in some cases.
I mean come on you search for 'lsi' and no hits are returned? All you get is "Sorry - no matches. Please try some different terms. " but nothing to help you know what those terms are.

Every other (likely) punctuation fails. Doesn't matter where you put it. If you put a hyphen (one of the most common used in model nos.), even if it actually matches a word, it will return zero results. Go ahead--search for GDA-600. Yeah you can search for GDA600 but you'll only get 6 results. You can't tell me that the GDA-600has only been mentioned at CP only 6 times. No it means that it was typed without the hyphen in those 6 results. The search omits all the other results.

Oh what's that you say? I should just search on "Adcom"? Oh OK, yeah that was easy-and pretty much useless too if I'm looking for posts on just the GDA-600. And ya know what, if I use adcom and gda600 in the same search, I only get 5 results (that's one less). What? Somebody mentioned GDA600 without Adcom?

shack wrote: »

Another quick search for lsi9 was 500 results (the maximum the search function will show)....

You omitted the hyphen and thus elminated any result where the term used it. I know I have typed it as 'lsi-9' in some posts, and I'm sure that I'm not the only one-those posts will not be returned in the results.
Yes you can type LSI*, but then you get every post for the entire series.
OK so to filter that 500 threads down when you use lsi9 --I want to know only about the lsi9 and emotiva. So I typed lsi9 emotiva seems logical right? Hmmm I only got 15 results. Hmm. I guess that there just aren't very many discussions with both of them huh? :rolleyes: Well I guess since I didn't find my answer in those 15 threads going back 5 years, I guess I'll have to create a new thread and ask somebody. :rolleyes:

heiney9 wrote: »

Hmmm.....I just searched "Emotiva" and got 500 hits on CP.

shack wrote: »

Why go through all of that when all you have to do is type emotiva in the search box on CLUB POLK and you get the last 500 posts with emotiva mentitoned in them?

That's more than 3 characters-I would expect that to return results. See my above example when trying to further limit the results.
Maybe somebody doesn't want to search through 500 posts on emotiva. They make several products. Maybe somebody doesn't want to read through 200 posts on the LPA-1 to read about the XPA-3. That's not lazy, that's just futile.

Also, not every thread includes the manufacturer name when discussing a product. How often does one say Polk Audio when they refer to the LSi or RTi series?
You would be limiting your search results and thus maybe eliminating the answer to your question if you were a user searching for one.

heiney9 wrote: »

Sure, you might have to actually spend some time and do some research, but there is a LOAD of information.

Everyone wants the quick answer and rarely bothers to search for any answers.

I agree, but my point is is that its not necessarily that one might not be bothering at all to search-it just may be that its not very easy and can be frustrating.

Everybody expects the new user, some new to internet forums by thier own admission (thus may not be familiar with other forums either), to use the search feature first. And my point is that, at least with the Polk Forum, that the search feature is not intuitive and has some serious limitations. There are no examples provided, no hints as to the wildcards that could be used.
Thus when a search can't be completed for whatever reason, the user just ends up posting a new thread to ask a question.

I mean asking a legitimate audio question , even if its been beat to death, where people (including new members who may have some good insight) are eager to answer should be better accepted than completely non-audio related posts which are a plenty here at CP, don't ya think?

I'm not saying that some of the new users don't come off cocky and disrespectful or that they are unwilling to accept an opinion or general consensus, that is a completely different issue. I'm saying that its not very intuitive to search (for useful info) at Club Polk and that may be part of the reason why the same questions are asked over and over (by different users-not by the same user- again different issue).

Example--I'm pretty sure that 802.11g has to have been mentioned on this board at least once right? Hmm. ZERO results.

OK so you're a new Club Polk user. You want to know something about the use of an Emotiva XPA-5 (or XPA5) with a Polk Audio (or PolkAudio) RTi12 (or RTi-12 or Rti 12) speakers. That seems like a pretty common question right? Using only the CP forum search engine, What search terms would you use? What would you type?
Here's some of my results:
I type emotiva xpa5 rti12 and I get zero results
I type xpa5 rti12 and I get 1 (one) result :eek:
Anything I type with a hyphen ( the other iterations of the above search terms) I get zero results.
If I type a term with a space it looks like a separate term and numbers are eliminated from the results.
Come on educate me. Make my ClubPolk searching experience a good one. :cool:

shack

mmadden28 wrote:

OK so you're a new Club Polk user. You want to know something about the use of an Emotiva XPA-5 (or XPA5) with a Polk Audio (or PolkAudio) RTi12 (or RTi-12 or Rti 12) speakers. That seems like a pretty common question right? Using only the CP forum search engine, What search terms would you use? What would you type?
Here's some of my results:
I type emotiva xpa5 rti12 and I get zero results
I type xpa5 rti12 and I get 1 (one) result :eek:
Anything I type with a hyphen ( the other iterations of the above search terms) I get zero results.
If I type a term with a space it looks like a separate term and numbers are eliminated from the results.
Come on educate me. Make my ClubPolk searching experience a good one. :cool:

emotiva XPA RTi12 gave me 12 results.

XPA RTi12 gave me 500 (the max) results

XPA5 RTi12 gave me 2 results including this thread.

xpa5 gave 39 me results...most of which had no mention of the RTi12.

Obviously threads about a XPA-5 and the RTi12 is not all than common. I would not expect it to be a HOT topic.

I think you are trying to make it way too complicated. It isn't rocket science and it works.

mmadden28

Any search term that is less than four characters, even though it says it uses it as a search term it is being ignored. It just makes you think it included it. The only thing 3 letter search does is highlight the term if it happens to be on the page.

shack wrote: »

emotiva XPA RTi12 gave me 12 results.

Your search for emotiva XPA RTi12 is actually the same as emotiva rti12. Try it. you get 12 results either way. And you can't tell me that Emotiva products and the RTi12s was only ever discussed 12 times at CP.

shack wrote: »

XPA RTi12 gave me 500 (the max) results

Again you only got results for the RTi12. The only thing you get with the XPA is if that term happened to be on the page it gets highlighted. In this search set (the second result), where is the XPA mentioned in the thread titled "Panamax m5400 vs. m5300"?
I changed the search to just rti12 and the search results did not change.

shack wrote: »

XPA5 RTi12 gave me 2 results including this thread.

So do you agree that besides this post the XPA5 and the RTi12 were only ever discussed in 1 thread?
What about this thread? It mentions both the XPA-5 and the RTi12 in the same post, that just might answer somebody's question about the combo. But alas, its not in the search results

shack wrote: »

xpa5 gave 39 me results...most of which had no mention of the RTi12.

I guess not. According to your results above, only one thread would have the combo ever discussed.

shack wrote: »

Obviously threads about a XPA-5 and the RTi12 is not all than common. I would not expect it to be a HOT topic.

Yeah Obviously. :rolleyes: I can't image why anybody would ever think of pairing up an RTi12 with an XPA-5 nor would I ever imagine that pairing an amp with Polk speakers would be discussed at CP.

shack wrote: »

I think you are trying to make it way too complicated. It isn't rocket science and it works.

Your own results show that it does not work effectively for all search terms.
Ultimately, based on your results only 1 thread that might contain an answer that might already exist about an XPA-5 and the RTi12s. And if a user only reads that one thread and their question is not answered--would they be wrong to post a new thread asking a question about an XPA-5 and the RTi12's?

You simply cannot search for anything with less than 4 characters or anything with a hyphen or a period in it.

Of course, while Google would be far superior as a search engine in this scenario its also not the final answer either. Google indexes the entire page--including anybody's equipment signatures. Whereas at least within the forums search engine, the signatures are not indexed since they are not actually a part of the post, but a variable.

.
.
.
I'm not sure if there are options in the vBulletin software for this, but I think it would be a good idea to at least make it a 3 character minimum search and to allow for hyphens and periods(dots).

F1nut

JHC, so the search function may not be the best. At least we have one and if someone puts their mind to it, I'm sure they can find what they are looking for.

shack

I would say that 99% of the posters on this forum could care less about the Emotiva XPA-5 RTi12 combination. YOU may be the only person that happens to have it and has posted about it, so I can certainly understand why there is a limited number of posts. Also, Emotiva is a small internet only company with a limited customer base, like Outlaw, SVS, HSU and so forth. MOST of the audio purchasing public do not even know those companies exist...unlike Polk which is carried in several major retail outlets and is one of the largest speaker mfgs in the world.

I can search for and find EVERYTHING I want using the search tools from this forum and things learned from the internet (ie: adding an asterisk to a 3 character word or term). Searching for NAD, VPI, SVS, etc give me hundreds of results by using the asterisk. It simply tells the search engine to look for words starting with thost three characters.

If xpa5 and rti12 doesn't yield the info, searching for emotiva, xpa, rti12 will yield hundreds of posts to review...but alas the searcher may just have to spend a little time and effort. Gee...sorry about that. :rolleyes:

I guess you can rip this post apart as well and try to further describe just how bad the Club Polk Search function is...whatever...it works for me and probably the majority of the folks here.

Ricardo

Yawn... Does anyone actually read those extremely long posts??

mewisemagic

just go here to ask questions about emo:D http://emotivalounge.proboards54.com/

sandworms

Ricardo wrote: »

Yawn... Does anyone actually read those extremely long posts??

the horse is dead people! can't we all just get along
happy new year!:)

mmadden28

You completely missed my point. AS I SAID the Emotiva and RTi12 terms were was just an example. The same can be said for LSi or GDA-600, etc, etc, etc. The point was the search function will not always yield the results that somebody wants and when they can't find it they will post a new thread. And that apparently bothers people because of the constant reposting of the same old questions. But people would rather just assume that the posters are lazy instead of looking at it from both sides.
Again, I did NOT say this was a problem for all searches, just those that meet the criteria I mentioned.

Sheesh, you'd think you were getting personally offended as if you or Polk designed the search engine.

dkg999

Are we there yet?

jb77k

I am glad to have read through two pages of people complaining about this guy's questions to find out that nobody had anything to say related to the post.

Being the "good forum user" that I am, I did a search (just like everyone suggested), found this thread (thinking it MIGHT be useful) and am happy to report - that listening to all of you complain about everything and wasting ten minutes of my time sorting through these threads was quite useful (i guess sarcasm doesn't come across very well when typed into a computer).

If you don't haven anything positive to report on one of these threads, try simply not posting something, instead of pointing out (to somebody new) that they are idiots for not knowing the fantastic things that all of you know.

I come here to get expert advice and try to avoid making foolish decisions and buy gear that I can't operate properly (or even worse, gear that I am going to break). You guys know a lot, not just about the equipment, but about how to use this forum correctly. If you are tired of hearing about Emotiva, don't read those comments, instead of making the rest of us read 45 responses about how sick you are of hearing about Emotiva.

People act ridiculous in these forums. I have started to realize that in half of these forums, the people making comments are the "die-hards" that are sick of "Polkies" (like me) asking questions - sorry guys, but this is the place for me to get helpful input from people who actually own this equipment. We need your help, not your critque. We come to Polkaudio.com because we feel we can get honest, unbiased help from people who know more than us - and know alot more about Polk equipment than the people selling this stuff in the stores.

That is all. I am sorry to have added to the endless stream of posts that aren't answering this quy's questions. Shame on me.

reeltrouble1

cfrizz wrote: »

I'll take an established Polkie's word over anyone from anywhere else!

Good.

Tubes Rule
Balanced Trumps Unbalanced
Big Speaker=Big Sound
Big Speaker with Big Current=Better Sound
Paypal sucks
Polk Nation Rocks

That is all.

RT1

heiney9

jb77k wrote: »

I am glad to have read through two pages of people complaining about this guy's questions to find out that nobody had anything to say related to the post.

Being the "good forum user" that I am, I did a search (just like everyone suggested), found this thread (thinking it MIGHT be useful) and am happy to report - that listening to all of you complain about everything and wasting ten minutes of my time sorting through these threads was quite useful (i guess sarcasm doesn't come across very well when typed into a computer).

If you don't haven anything positive to report on one of these threads, try simply not posting something, instead of pointing out (to somebody new) that they are idiots for not knowing the fantastic things that all of you know.

I come here to get expert advice and try to avoid making foolish decisions and buy gear that I can't operate properly (or even worse, gear that I am going to break). You guys know a lot, not just about the equipment, but about how to use this forum correctly. If you are tired of hearing about Emotiva, don't read those comments, instead of making the rest of us read 45 responses about how sick you are of hearing about Emotiva.

People act ridiculous in these forums. I have started to realize that in half of these forums, the people making comments are the "die-hards" that are sick of "Polkies" (like me) asking questions - sorry guys, but this is the place for me to get helpful input from people who actually own this equipment. We need your help, not your critque. We come to Polkaudio.com because we feel we can get honest, unbiased help from people who know more than us - and know alot more about Polk equipment than the people selling this stuff in the stores.

That is all. I am sorry to have added to the endless stream of posts that aren't answering this quy's questions. Shame on me.

Thanks for adding the useful information you so covet.

Gaara

Here comes the wambulance.

jb77k

I know. My information was potentially the least useful of all the posts. But, I think we can all assume at this point that I won't bring anything useful to the table anyhow - I'm here to learn, not teach.

Besides, it seemed like this became the proper forum page to post responses unrelated to the topic, so I joined the party.

jb77k

I like "wambulance" by the way. That one actually made me laugh out loud. I suppose the fact that my sarcastic tone doesn't come off very well through my posts, I am sounding more of a whiner than I mean to. Either way, kudos with the wambulance comment.

So anyhow, how does the XPA-5 work with the LSi9's?

shack

Quite a diatribe from someone who has been on this forum for a week.

As in every social order (and an internet forum is indeed a form of social structure) there are things that are apparent and things that are not and it is those unseen factors are often much much more dynamic than what is posted on an internet forum. Much of what goes on here falls in the latter category and not easily discernable in the short span of a week.

Interesting that you state there are so many posts that have not answered the OPs question...when the original posters intent was to do EXACTLY what you find so distasteful...make a "tongue-in-cheek" complaint about asking questions about information that is readily available. This entire thread has been about that theme...

It seems to me that after reading the original post (or even the 2 or 3 susequent posts)...you would not have wasted 10 minutes reading the entire thread...unless of course you really wanted to add to the topic...which obviously you did...since you posted.

Gaara

jb77k wrote: »

I like "wambulance" by the way. That one actually made me laugh out loud. I suppose the fact that my sarcastic tone doesn't come off very well through my posts, I am sounding more of a whiner than I mean to. Either way, kudos with the wambulance comment.

So anyhow, how does the XPA-5 work with the LSi9's?

Kudos for taking it well. Most of the time it either gets people all riled up in a fiery rage, or laughing. To be honest I didn't read all of your post, I got to the 2nd paragraph where you complained of wasted time and felt it ironic so I stopped.

P.S. If you were serious -> http://www.google.com/search?hl=en&q=xpa+lsi+site%3Awww.polkaudio.com%2Fforums%2F&btnG=Search