I sent this to the Outlaw 950 service dept. a week ago and got no response. Maybe Scott will see this and e-mail me. Has any of you 950 owners had this problem:

"I need some help with my 950. This is my 2nd 950, the first one just died and wouldn't power up any longer. Since the first day I hooked the 2nd unit up I've had one nagging problem and that is I get Pops and Cracking sounds through my speakers when I change TV Channels and the 950 acquires the Audio for the station. This did not happen when I had my first 950, I've tried hooking my Direct TV output to different inputs on the 950 but nothing helps. Sometimes it seems it gets better after the 950 warms up but it still happens and I'm concerned it could do some kind of damage to my speakers.I love my 950, it sounds great and I don't have this problem when I play movies from my DVD Player when the 950 acquires the audio setting from the DVD. I know you guys have been busy dealing with the hissing problem (which I don't have) and other problems so I haven't been in any hurry to contact you and I tried to convince myself I could get used it but it's bothering other members of the family. Have you guys heard from any other owners experiencing the same kind of problems? Do you have any suggestions?"

Thanks
Rob

quick and dirty is that you have an electronic short somewhere in the 950>>>just an educated guess......should be sent in for repair because it can cause damage in the food chain

Mine pops too. Mostly in DVD setup menus when the sound hasn't been locked. Mine was in the 1st batch. No hiss though.....and it sounds great! Not sure what to do .

I don't have any definite answers, but I can certainly toss in an idea -- in all the debate about time required to auto-detect the streams, that too long caused the oft-noted second(s) of silence but too short could cause it to let through some random noise. When that noise slips through could be source-related in this case (RKPhelps' case certainly sounds related to the DirecTV at least in part since the DVD player doesn't exhibit the same behavior).

If this is the problem, there may be a workaround. Do you find yourself using the same processing mode for all your TV watching (in other words, is it all a stereo signal)? If so, you could try disabling the auto-detect for that input and lock it on PLII or whatever you have been using, which might eliminate the problem. Page 31 of the manual has the details of how to do this -- it's the "Surround Data Format Lock" section. If you have some stations that come through in DD5.1 and others that are stereo, you'd probably want to leave it set to auto-detect.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

Hmmmm. My beta unit did this during DVD setup menus too. I tested this using the Ghost World DVD which has some menus with sound and others without. My final 950 does not do this, as a result of our testing on the beta units. At the same time though, the beta did not hiss as much as my final unit, which only hisses from about within 4 inches from the tweeter on my system.

BTW, I've been asked to send in my beta unit tomorrow to Outlaw, and I will comply. That will leave me with only my final unit, just like any other buyer who got the shipped 950.

So... we'll all wait together and see what happens...

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Take Care,
merc

[This message has been edited by merc (edited July 24, 2002).]

I've had problems before trying to use the data format lock and eventually gave up on it despite its being a very handy feature. In particular, locking my CD player onto PCM (and I swear there are no non-PCM disks in there) sometimes worked, and sometimes produced dead silence.

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Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

I thought I'd keep you guys up to date and welcome any Thoughts and comments on the e-mail I sent to Scott below:

Scott, I just tried to call but there was no answer. I played around with the 950 last night because it was suggested in a post that I try locking the sound data format. While I was doing this I was cycling thru the different formats with the remote and I noticed it did not make the popping sounds while aquiring a new sound format with it sitting on the same TV station channel. Since the popping only occurs when changing channels I started thinking that the problem maybe in the Optical Digital connection in my Sony Direct TV Receiver and not in the 950. I changed the hookup between the Sony and the 950 from Optical to an Analog and the Popping sounds are gone. So I think my 950 is fine and there must be something wrong with the Sony Optical Port. What do you think?

Thanks for your help

Rob Phelps