The examples you cite are user interface and feature set issues. It doesn't necessairly take tons of money to design-in these things, just some intelligent designing and market research. The hardware overhead involved would be more powerful DSPs and/or different decoding ICs, among other things. The actual parts involved in building a pre/pro are not as expensive as some would have you believe. Mundane things like the power transformer and chassis are more costly than any other electronic part.

I wouldn't be surprised if the Outlaws were already designing a second generation preamp that would take into consideration these issues.

While the skill of the designer does play a big part in the ultimate performance of a product, purchasing an "expensive" pre/pro does not necesssairly guarantee that it was designed by the best engineering talent (I've run into this more times than I care to think about).

[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited March 31, 2003).]