Thank you for this great heads up...so . let me get this straight, these people reverse engineered the Emotiva stuff and they build it in China , along with the Chinese text in the back of the components?
Not exactly. Tonewinner is an OEM supplier. They have been for quite some time and only relatively recently began selling their own label in North America. As far as I know, they don't really have a US distributor (yet). Summit Hi-Fi will sell Tonewinner in the US, but they are actually a Canadian firm.
Tonewinner builds equipment for Emotiva on an OEM basis. Tonewinner may do a major portion of the design work as well. The Emotiva gear is built to Emotivas specification. The Tonewinner AT-300 and the Emo MC-1 are the same basic piece of gear. They differ in features.
They are definitely a bit cheaper than the Emotiva people AND they also added analog inputs PLUS 1/4" analog inputs and outputs in the back which the current Emotiva HIGH END stuff doesn't have...
Am seriously considering the preamp and the 5 channel amp...
The only thing that worries me is the support and warranty...
The Tonewinner AT-300 costs $400 more than the Emotiva MC-1, so the processor isnt cheaper. Tonewinner didn't add features to the AT-300, Emo asked for the balanced outputs to be removed. The rumour is they didn't want the MC-1 to be too much competition for their higher priced Atmos processors. I'm not sure about the 6 channel input. To use it on the Tonewinner you have to sacrifice three of the four stereo inputs as they are assignable. The rumour on that is it can be retrofitted to the MC-1 with a firmware update which Emo may or may not be willing to do. I cant say for sure about the power amps, but its likely that they manufacture some, if not all, of Emotivas BasX line.
All Emo processors except the MC-1 have balanced outputs.
There are caveats. These apply to both AVPs. Any source you plug into them, whether digital or analog is going to be converted to a maximum of 48kHz sample rate. That's the internal max processing rate of the units themselves. Hence, there is no true analog bypass. All analog signals get converted to either 44.1kHz or 48kHz. There is a USB audio input, but it is limited to 16bit 44.1/48kHz stereo. Bass management is always active, unless you bypass it in setup. EQ can be bypassed based on the input.
The Auto EQ function on both of them sucks badly. They do have parametric EQ for all channels: 11 bands LCR, 9 bands surround, 7 bands for heights, and 5 bands for the sub, I think. That can be set manually. But if you are going to use EQ, plan on determining the filters with REW or use an outboard Dirac processor. The auto function is useless.
Even with all that being said, they do seem like bargains in todays marketplace based on the number of channel configs that are possible.
I made the choice for Emotiva because of the service/support issue, and I didnt need the balanced outputs. YMMV