Fellow Outlaws,

I have not seen much discussion of my biggest concern about the 950's design: the lack of means to upgrade its internal operating code.

The long delay has, fortunately or not, given me the opportunity to look closely at the features offered by competing units. After much soul-searching, my interest in the 950 is beginning to succumb to the much discussed "death of a 1000 paper cuts."

My greatest concern about the 950 is the lack of a mechanism by which the operating code can be patched/upgraded. I think Outlaw's decision not to include an RS-232 or FireWire port on the 950 constitutes a major oversight.

As with any complex computer software system, there is always a likelihood that bugs will be found. Also, as technology develops, new features and enhancements will become available. Unfortunately, Outlaw made a decision not to offer customers a means to incorporate those inevitable bug fix/features into their units. Their competitors did. As a result, I now have serious concerns about the long-term viability of the 950.

The inclusion of an RS-232 port would also have offered Outlaw the ability to sell upgrades providing them a source of incremental revenue with little manufacturing investment.

Without a means to upgrade the code, the 950 now represents a technological dead-end. It will remain a snapshot of the current state of technology that does not possess the ability stay abreast of industry developments. The Rotel and Anthem both offer that feature and, as a result, appear to have been designed with the long-term in mind.

I would gladly have paid $50-100 more for that feature. How about you? As it now stands, my excitement about the 950 is waning.

Any thoughts?

Santa Clara Jim


[This message has been edited by santaclarajim (edited June 16, 2002).]

I am not bothered by the inability to upgrade. There are a few products that offer it but many more that don't. By the time I am buying something that has the next latest and greatest features (a few years off to be sure) I will want the newest DACS and latest input standards to be met. Unless you get one of the couple boxes out there that can take daughter board upgrades you will need to upgrade regardless. I like the way mine sounds and the ability to upgrade wasn't on my list of must have's for 899. I figure that if I can sell it for a portion of what I paid for it when I upgrade I will be doing ok.

------------------
Stott

I think the RS-232 port needs to be viewed as a software enhancement not a technology upgrade path.

When you receive a 950, you get what comes in the box. Unless yours is defective and swapped out with a new unit, that's it.

The Rotel 1066 can have its software ungraded, which basically means fixing bugs, not a major leap in technology. What what I have read/understand, people have already upgraded their Rotels to add DD EX and fix a couple of bugs.

I agree with santaclarajim, the complexity of these processors and the software that runs on them, make the ability to upgrade it invaluable. If you cannot upgrade the software, you either are an early adopter and live with any significant bugs, or you are a late adopter, get the improved code, but go without a processor for many months. The upgradable software gives you the best of both worlds.

I think that the real problem is the 950 is too good. Good enough for many to want all the other features that a more expensive pre/pro offers. But it was designed to be sold at a certain price, period. For many of us that is the most important factor in building an HT. It is one of the reasons we use separates, so that we can upgrade individual components as necessary/feasible/affordable.

I don't think this poses a problem. I have a B&K Ref 30. It has a RS-232 port on the back that can be used for setup and control, but not software upgrades. I just upgraded the software this weekend from 2.05 to 2.08 by replacing an eprom. This took only a minute or two longer than it used to take me to upgrade my Sony TA-E9000ESs software using the RS-232 port.

Adam,

Does the 950 offer the ability to upgrade the eprom as well?

Regards,
Santa Clara Jim

From what I understand, the 950 does have the ability to upgrade software via E-PROM replacement. Check out this blurb from the October news -- near the bottom is mention of e-prom replacement.

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

Gonk,

Thank you for the pointer. So, from what I gather from the blurb, there is a mechanism to upgrade the EPROM, but there is no indication as to whether or not it will actually be used. Hmmmmmmmm... I guess that's good news...uhhhh...right?

Santa Clara Jim



[This message has been edited by santaclarajim (edited June 17, 2002).]

I thought I read somewhere that the Outlaws said they would NOT be using the EPROM to do any upgrades as they were using an unshielded power supply. I didn't find it on a quick search so I could be mistaken.

------------------
Stott

Can you find out for sure if they are using an unshielded power supply? Your source?

That may be part of the hissing issue, if true.

Dan

If the Outlaws see value in letting customers update the code at home, instead of making us ship the units to Outlaw for them to update the code, maybe the new 950, the one with the hiss fix, might support it. It seems that allowing customers to update code like the 1066 does, is a no-brainer. Well maybe it seems like a no-brainer now, in retrospect, but it's probably too late to make that change to the 950.

For an unshielded power supply, to swap the EEPROMs, just like a PC, right?

In other words, you just have to make damn sure that you are grounded properly before you swap chips or else you could fry them?

Will,

I am afraid that the Outlaw's made the decision that the addition of the upgrade feature would raise the cost beyond their target price. While I am not entirely sure that I believe that reasoning, I think that their declared position renders the probability that they would add that feature extremely low.

It's really too bad, as that addition would make ny decision whether to buy so much easier.

Regards,
Santa Clara Jim



[This message has been edited by santaclarajim (edited July 23, 2002).]

For an A/V pre/processor, I think the ability to update the microcode is important. It is certainly needed for bug fixes. Taking the unit into a shop is a major pain.

As an electronics engineer, an eprom change is nothing. To a non-technical user, it may be asking a bit much.

Presently, I am using a Sony str-db940 as a pre/processor and amplification for the rear channels. My main preamp is a Nakamichi 610.

I am looking at pre/processors to replace both the Nakamichi and the Sony. Sound quality takes precedence over (mostly gimmiks to me) settings like stadium, church, symphony hall, small jazz club, etc.

With newer comuters doing away with old technology such as rs232 ports, keyboard, mouse and such, I even question the wisdom of new designs offering a rs232 port. Firewire seems attactive to me as both a bitsteam input to be processed (dvd-a and sacd) and processor updates.

Paul

------------------
the 1derful1

Well, I'd love to have an Ethernet port in it, for both remote control (via a PC) and software updates. To me, that would simply be the cat's meow. Maybe put in an HPNA port for the phone line people in the audience. The point is, I want a supplied program that paints a picture of a 950 on my PC and allows me to push buttons with the mouse. Updates delivered on CD-ROM.

Of course multiple firewire ports for bitstream inputs are definitely necessary.

It looks like the Outlaws didn't reject the upgradability argument altogether; after all, the ROM *is* socketd. They just don't seem to be too interested in putting out updates for it.

On another note, it turns out that all of the 950 fixes so far have not been simple code changes; the code seems to be pretty good so far. Of course, all code needs a fix sooner or later.

------------------
Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

well I'm sure the lawyers will kill any eprom changes. Well your honor, the company sent me a new chip, with this one sheet instruction, telling me to open the unit, now???????????I DO NOT THINK THIS WILL EVER HAPPEN!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Why not? People open up PCs all the time to install more memory, additional drives, sound cards, etc...

And once upon a time, people had to extract RAM DIPP chips with a chip puller to install larger chips ... as opposed to today's SIMMs and DIMMs and ZIFs...

------------------
Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Actually, I think this is a bigger issue for the Outlaw clones than for Outlaw themselves. At the 950's price point, I wouldn't consider the unit "disposable," but it may be low enough for this type of product that many will be well served by its "snapshot in time." Remember, the upgrade pricing for competitive pre/pros often approaches the total cost of the 950! But buyers of the 950 clones, at higher price points, may expect a platform, not a box.

Of course, the high end receiver market completely contradicts this: I spent $2600 on a Yamaha DSP-A1 a few years back, and there's no way to upgrade it, the RX-V1 that replaced it, or the RX-Z1 that's replacing that. Nearly all the receiver manufacturers follow the same business model.

There's another reason in favor of boxes vs. platforms: accounting. As a product marketing manager, one of my biggest headaches was this: if you ship a product, you want to recognize the revenue (you sold it, you want the money you received to show up on your books). But if the unit is upgradeable, your accountants may not consider the sale complete - and you may have to defer some of the revenue until you ship upgrades.

-avi

http://www.greengart.com

Avi- Good point! Both the AT and Sherbourn units I presume will "street" for a very similar price to the Rotel. The Rotel, *is* upgradeable...

As far as *reasonably priced* receivers, I guess that the manufacturers figure that an *upgrade* is the next receiver in the line. Yamaha RX-V1200 to the 1300. Denon AVR-3802 to the 3803...

I also think that in the reasonably priced receiver market, the products are upgraded much more often by the manufacturer (every year to 18 months) than pre/pros (the Sony TA-E9000ES is almost 4 years old!), so the changes between models are more incremental than revolutionary, so maybe there are less reasons to offer upgrades as well. If that makes sense...

Soon after the 950 was first released it was recalled in order to fix two problems and the Outlaws incidentally also installed the latest Cirrus code update. My take is code is updated often. Here's an excerpt:


[This message has been edited by Will (edited July 26, 2002).]

Ambitious as the t950 is with all the surround formats, I agree that not making provisions for an update is a design (marketing $$ ?) error. Popping, slow acquisition time, problems with certain DVD’s/hardware combos, Dolby Labs messing with the EX spec., I think all pre/pro manufactures have required more than one try to get it right. I just received my Anthem AVM20 that replaced the demo I had, it was delivered with version 1.16 software. The demo was a December build, at version 1.0, I think the 1.16 is the sixth version, not the 16th, but that is still about one a month…

I wonder if the newer 950s have newer software. There's no way I know of to find out which software version (from Cirrus or ?) is in an individual 950.

Having new software loaded may be a concern when 950's start shipping again. I'd imagine the Outlaws won't want to emphasize any software updates, since that might encourage current 950 owners to request an cxchange to a new (hiss-fixed) 950 model.

I'd guess you're probably right. Although they did emphasize the software upgrade when they fixed the audio dropout problem... I imagine that's because they had already decided to recall all the units they'd shipped, which is different from the current situation.

------------------
Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

One reason to hope that, when the Outlaw 950 ships again, it contains updated software (DSP code), is the 950 is competing against the 1066 which is always being updated with new software, and some of these updates can be downloaded online.

Otherwise, people who buy the 950 as new, will get software with it that's a bit dated. Well, ok, it's not THAT dated.

I wonder if, when the 950 starts shipping in August or September or whenever, that people who buy it new, will buy it with updated (DSP) software, not the same software the 950 first had when it shipped months earlier.

[This message has been edited by Will (edited August 07, 2002).]

So people who buy a 950 a year from now will get a better 950 than the one that I have?

------------------
Matthew J. Hill
matt@idsi.net

Good question. Unless the Outlaws tell us how to determine the 950's version (like the 1066), it may be hard to know.

I read on another thread that Cirrus (not Rotel or Outlaw) probably writes the basic software for Rotel and Outlaw surround modes -- aka the 1066's XS surround mode, and the 950's CES surround mode.

The thread is at: http://ubb.outlawaudio.com/ubb/Forum15/HTML/000434.html