"I am not downplaying the hiss, but by being able to eliminate it, I am very impressed with the sound of the 950, and will keep it as the hub of my system for many years".

Be careful WS - I said this awile ago in "I am starting to understand this hiss thing" thread (I started), and was basically told to FO! Some people think only one thing - Outlaw must be the only player to eliminate the hiss. Things you and I do to eliminate/reduce our hiss is "just getting in the way/counterproductive, stupid, yada - (things I was told I was) of no use!

I have never had any component in my home theater system, ever, that hisses as much as my current model 950 hisses.

WS, I'm glad you were lucky enough to be able to get rid of the hiss you heard out to three feet in your 950 by turning the gain down on each of your power amps.

I eliminated the hiss and can still drive the amp to ear bleeding levels. Of course, the amount of hiss that the Yamaha produced would have drove me nuts.The 950 is quiet compared to it.

Can't go by # of posters. How many posters have never noticed a hiss? Not ten times as many. I bet a lot more people than 10-15 heard an abnormal hiss on the 950, at least until they modified their system (as you have done, successfully) because it is "too sensitive" to hiss.

Best,

Will

And how many aren't really cognizant of the 950 Saloon, and just ordered out of an ad in S&V, and never even thought to check but have it anyway? And how many people have had it, returned units, and just never posted at all?

Most people don't have it. Some people do. The Outlaws say they are still working on it. People who are considering a purchase need to know that.

Kevin:
Have you heard anything more from Outlaw about their renewed efforts to fix the hiss?

You know, the more I think about it, I'm beginning to think that the whole hiss issue may be more related to the basic setup of the 'building blocks' that the manufacturers have adopted in producing 'a home theatre pre/pro', than to a design flaw per se. I've read of hiss on even high priced units, and this does not make sense unless the manufacturers are being 'forced' by some convention to design the signal flow in a way that may produce 'convenience' at the expense of things like noise. Think about the tortured wank that is 'bass management'; not very elegant in my opinion, but a 'standard' none the less. The noise I actually measured on two 950s was the equavilent of 12-13 bit noise performance: I can't think of how someone could knowingly design something that bad unless they were constrained by designing to a certain 'blueprint' of signal flow. I have already established that the noise is worse when the 950 is converting audio to digital and back to analog in order to perform some DSP function. However, I do the same thing in my workstation every day, and without any audible hiss. The digital volume control maybe? They aren't inherently noisy unless very poorly designed, which I can't imagine is the case in the 950. The only culprit that I can see remaining is some non-optimum bit shifting, perhaps to acccomadate things like 'trim settings', 'bass management' and the like. Perhaps the designers have their hands tied to a certain extent by the nature of the beast.

In any event, I would love to see a schematic diagram and block diagram of the 950 to see what exactly is going on, design wise. Fat chance of that however.

Oh well, just geeky ramblings.....



[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited November 03, 2002).]

SH: Just that they are still working on it. I did get the impression that the solution was going to be sooner than later, but I don't know how to gauge that.

I'll agree somewhat with what you said. I certainly believe that Outlaw didn't go out to design a unit that hisses (in some people's systems ). But I also believe that some of the problem might be whatever compromises had to go into actually producing a pre/pro of the 950's capabilities at the price point it's at. Me, myself, and I, kinda sorta point the finger at Eastech. All I know is that the 950 hisses more than the Sony TA-E9000ES pre/pro it replaced in my system. However, directly due to the additional capabilities the 950 has that the Sony didn't, and the quite acceptable sound quality, I did choose to keep it, to enjoy it, but to still hopefully wait for a fix too.

Modern pre/pros with ICs, boards, complex computer code, and DSP algorythms *can* be produced with minimal amounts of hiss. As we are all finding out, maybe it's not as easy as a straight-ahead analog pre/pro, but it is possible.


[This message has been edited by Kevin C Brown (edited November 04, 2002).]

The Outlaws have said on more than one occassion that they would fix the hiss problem that many people are hearing. And they have said on more than one occassion that they had fixed it. They even stopped production for months earlier this year in order to fix the hiss problem. But at least in my case, they have not been able to fix the hiss that existed from the VERY BEGINNING, with the 950 in my home theater, despite the fact that I have invited their local technicians in Los Angeles to hear the hiss here first hand.

The Outlaws must know there's a hiss problem with the 950. The question is if they'll fix it now, after having tried, tried and tried to do so over many months. The 950 is getting on in its life cycle. Maybe a 950 Rev 2, or a 951, will be the answer.

Kevin and Soundhound and many others who hear the hiss would no doubt, also invite the Outlaws to their homes to hear the hiss, as I have done.


[This message has been edited by Will (edited November 04, 2002).]

Looking again at the title of this thread, I too have a What's-up-with-that question: I don't know if this has been asked before (so forgive me if it has), but how come there was no mention of the hiss whatsoever during the beta tests? Was it not present or did the testers simply not hear it or...? Just curious, that's all.

Thanx,
Sanjay

I think there was mention of beta testing before, and I think that at least Will brought it to their attention from the start. All I can say is that if _I_ had been one of the testers, I _know_ that the hiss, among other things would have been brought to their attention, with measurements to support it.