In my last thread, someone told me that comparing an Outlaw 950 to a Lexicon processor was absurd. Here is one example of how wrong that is. Some of you may not be old enough to recall 1988 with much clarity. That year, at its annual convention, Stereophile magazine conducted a blind test comparing that then darling of tube lovers, the VTL monoblock, to a "cheap" solid state Adcom 555. Comparing a $4,000 tube amp to a $500 solid state is unfair. Right? The VTLs had to win. Stereophile did A/B comparisons to something like 1,000 listeners (I can't recall the exact number of participants) with levels set precisely the same for the two amps, using B & W 901 loudspeakers, and playing many musical styles from a variety of labels. The result? No one heard any difference. There was one possible exception. On a Telarc recording of the Faure Requiem recording with organ, about 2/3 were able to discern a difference. Likely, they were hearing the "cheap" Adcom's superior damping factor and the resulting tighter bass. That is precisely why you can - and should - compare Outlaw to its more expensive competition. And to the guy who stated that the only pure-sounding pre-amp is a passive volume control, you could not be more wrong. That means setting of the volume control determines in large part the output impedance of the pre-amp. As the output impedance climbs toward the input impedance of the amplifier, the closer you come to creating an interaction called a tone control, only this one cannot be defeated. Ohm's law cannot be broken without consequence.