Well, then again, if more than a few people were'nt noticing abnormal hiss, these threads would not exist. Myself, I don't have _any_ other piece of equipment (including a sony pre/pro) that is as noisy as the 950 (and it does _not_ mute in absence of signal). I really wish it were'nt so, but since it is the case, I have tried to support the finding with measured results, hoping Outlaw would get the message and fix the bloody problem, and it _is_ a problem. Home theatre is confusing enough for the average user without having to put up with inaccurate specifications, and assurances that 'they all do it' Sorry, to that I say "Bull****" Fix the problem, and there will be no complaints. Simple concept.

My current take on the 950 is that there appears to be variations among units, huge variations.

We have units that hiss loudly, units that are virtually dead silent, and all hisses in between. We have units that sound great for music and others that sound flat and dull and others that are bright, lean, with no warmth. We have units that can be at max volume and not clip the amps and others that are plenty loud at -20dB on the volume control.

Sure, everyone has different systems and different opinions, but could people's opinion vary any more than we have seen with the 950?

I am guessing that there is some sort of correlation here. Maybe those units that are hissy, also are louder, more dynamic, more exciting, less warm, and deemed very accurate. Other units that have less hiss, are considered flat for music. I haven't gone through the smattering of opinions to see if this correlation actually exists, but it could be there.

The bigger questions are 1) is there really these huge unit-to-unit variations? and 2) is this the results of QA, part tolerances, or the band-aids used to combat the hiss problem? Makes you wonder if you exchange your 950 for hiss, what you will get with the replacement - could be a totally different animal.

Or as I said before - people tend to complain bought most everthing, hence a lot of stuff gets blown out. Case in point, my VW Passat / and German cars in general are known to have little/quirky gremlins - dashboards that on occasion rattle, and you should see the number of complaints on the VW B5.com forum on this rattle. Owned mine for 1.5 yrs now/its rattled a couple of times, but on the forum you'd think there a major q&a issue because of it.

How many actual (on-going) problems can we count on the 950.
1)hiss
2)composite up-conversion (think other pre-pros have it to)
3)I'm out of thoughts here. Bueller/Anyone??

Soundhound - I totally respect you, your measurements, and your profession (actually kind of jealous/just a boring Budget guy myself). I guess my point in "listening with my ears" was that isn't that what most of us really do at home. I'm as anal as anyone with my system, but at the end of the day its my ears/not a professional grade sound meter telling me if its sounding good.

Agree with bossobass too, if we could count how much equip "dosent meet specs", and didnt buy it cause of it, crap, my boombox would be in my room.

Bottomline is the 950 aint perfect, but I'm a firm beliver in the big picture, and with our systems there are many variables to account for in making things right. The sum of all the parts is way greater than the 950 alone. For some, the 950 just aint making the grade in their environment and maybe its time to move on. For others/(specifically me from my original point in this post), I've worked on it and believe I've got it.

Just need to fiqure out whats up with 5 channel stereo mode. Anybody else get a weird whistle/noise in this mode?

Generally, noises of this type are caused by some type of digital leakage/defect like some clocking signal beating with some other clock signal of a different frequency. The whistling you hear is not normal, or at least I've not noticed it in my admittedly limited use of that mode. If it really bothers you, you can always 'roll the dice' and request another 950 from the Outlaws.

It sure seems like that is the case.



Well, strictly speaking QA wouldn't actually cause this issue, but it would be their job as final arbiters of what's 'good enough to ship' to assure this sort of thing not happen. I'm really wondering (at risk of being ridiculed again) if this might not be a reason behind some clone makers (claims) to be substituting a few higher quality / tighter tolerence parts.

Obviously this would be a real nightmare for QA, since they are responsable for making sure bad units don't happen, but the final blame would be shared with engineering and/or manufacturing. Marketing often plays a big role too, as they often exert a lot of pressure to ship the item in question without due care to ensure engineering, manufacturing and quality assurance are comfortable with the 'good to go' status.

Nah, are you saying that marketing types would knowingly engage in "controlled lieing"??


[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited October 06, 2002).]

It wont bother me at all, as I dont use that mode for anything anyway. I use to use it on my Denon AVR 3200, alot for that matter, but now find PL II and DTS Neo to be to my liking for DVD's that have poorer DD sound.

Hi guys,
I have one of the pre-amps that hiss badly and I believe has an s-video problem.

Here is my humble take.
Normal I would go much higher end than the Outlaw. For $900 (if there werent any problems) the Outlaw would be a steal. However, personally I am surprised that no one has ever mentioned a small thing that I picked up in one of the first posts when the first hiss issue in March was developing. It was stated that the manufacturer supplimented a new part. That concerned me because that will imply that Outlaw will have a hugh QA problem since they dont have a plant that appears to be following their design specs to the letter.
I may be out of line, but David S your remarks and attitude are not constructive. We all know that most of the Outlaw may not have a hiss isuue, but you have to realize that when we start claiming the 950 can beat amps more than 3x its price it must be expected to be treated like a amp that is woth $3000 and not $899. If I was at a dealer showing me a $3000 amp hissed like mine I would think he was crazy.

It is not a slight hiss issue I have having. In HT mode when I have my CRT projector on I can be forgiving. However when I am listing to music and my other equipment are silent, that is different.

This is serious, otherwise the 950 will just be $899 pre-amp, which most guys like myself would not have even entertained looking at.

This is my humble opinion.

Thanks,
clopez

You are quite right that meters have lousy musical taste, and not much better taste in movies (but I guess Hollywood doesn't display much taste in movies either)...Anyway, Look at it this way. Measurements are only a tool to help dig out problems when they are suspected - they give hard numbers that can point to a resolution of a problem: comparasons can be made objectively on things like noise. Otherwise a lot of time can be wasted on guesswork. As a finance guy, do you _guess_ how much money is coming in or going out? (I'm assuming you don't work for Enron) No, numbers do that. Measurements have nothing to do with musical judgements, or sound quality ones either - I don't listen to my meters about music, and they don't listen to me about numbers. We co-exist.


[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited October 06, 2002).]

Actually I think that may be the definition of marketing...