If we assume that the Sherwood is not a P-965 with the 990's upgrades included - that it is instead an independent development - do we know when it will be available? It is not listed on their site.

Oops, posted in wrong topic, then moved the post!

So, question for the masses. Do any of you guys have any insight/opinions/experiences on the value of upsampling PCM to 192/24? I mean, Nyquist aside, I can understand the theoretical benefits of sampling an analog source at those rates - better high end extension, better sampling depth, which gives you - um, something - but PCM is just 44.1/16, right? So how does oversampling improve sound quality? And is there a downside - I mean, theoretically at least, wouldn't you run into the problem of resampling "between" the original samples? And what do the extra bits in each sample buy you, if they're not even present in the source?

Oh, and wingnut(4772) - love that handle BTW, that's been a longstanding nickname between me and a couple friends - started with the wingnuts that used to be de rigeur for clamping down cymbals and associated felts to their stands. IIRC, it's also the nickname of Guidebot the friendly helper 'bot on one of my all-time favorite PSX games - Descent Maximum. But anyway, not that we know how similar the internals are, but any comments on the phono stage of the P-965? Long story, but I've got a ton (almost literally) of vinyl sitting here in boxes and I'm planning on buying a decent turntable rig next year to get some of it onto the PC; if the 990's RIAA kung-fu is up to snuff, it might go a ways toward justifying the purchase.

Essentially all current D/A and A/D converters use oversampling and 1 bit conversion (Delta-Sigma, which is what SACD is based on) as their basis of operation. Whether the digital signal is "upsampled" to 192/24 or not is a moot point since the data is oversampled anyway.

That being said, upsampling to 192/24 or 192,000/48 for that matter is not going to give plain old 16 bit 44.1k (or even 24 bit audio) audio any more resolution that is already contained in the file. You can't add resolution that is not already there.

Thanks X84...That's a nickname my friends call me for a variety of reasons :p so it kind of stuck and I like it.

From what I have been gleening from the discussions via Mr. Doherty of Panasonic, Amir of Microsoft, and a gentleman from Sigma chips, and from various articles it looks like HDMI is it. In fact, both HD-DVD and the superior Blu-Ray's specs. were drawn up with HDMI in mind as Hollywood studios were more willing to accept the copy restrictions and encryption levels afforded by the HDMI consortium (ie, bad news for consumers).

Again, I suspect that bandwidth limited lossy formats like regular DTS and regular Dolby Digital, as well as stereo PCM up to 24/96 resolution will be allowed on toslink and coaxial as it is now. That's all the 990 would be good for anyway.

7.1 analog-out with all processing done in the player or HDMI will be the only way to get high resolution video and audio out of HD-DVD or Blu-Ray players. DVI with HDCP may or may not be included for video only transmission depending on the final video specs for both formats (you have to downsample certain color spacing requirements and other features using DVI since it is not as advanced as the newest HDMI specs.).

And this is where the 990 falls quite short... unless, of course, Outlaw will be designing something akin to the well received higher end Anthem pre-amp for their upper tier unit that will be HD-DVD and Blu-Ray capable and fully hardware and software upgradeable with premium audiophile parts.

Unless you really, really want PLIIx (the only really big difference between the 990 and 950) I would suggest waiting a little bit to see what these blue laser discs have in store for us.

That's another question: is the DVI switching function in the 990 fully HDCP compatible?

Correct me if I’m wrong …

Ladies and gents, for any digital signal at least two processes exist, the moving of the data from point A to point B and the manipulation and/or interpretation of the data at point A and point B.

Now if the 990 has the bandwidth and the bus width to handle either DVI or HDMI, but in that process the 990 doesn’t have to manipulate or interpret the data being passed along, then no matter how the formats evolve, developing new ways to create, format, manipulate and interpret the data, the 990 could just pass that data along in the same form it was received. Can't the 990 just be a switch for any data that fits the "pipeline?"

A related aside:

In the professional environments I work, almost all of the live, real time manipulation of audio and video signals is handled separately. An audio-follow-video router might be the only exception.

There have always been pros and cons to separates versus all-in-ones in the audio world. I think the day will come when we’ll want the processing of audio and video to be separate with some form a control data linking the devices so that they can act in a coordinated manner. In the same way that I can keep my 770 amp operating even if I upgrade to the 990 from my 950, eventually I’ll want to be able to upgrade my audio and video processing separately. The Outlaws could have made a real jump on the competition by either separating the video and audio processing into two devices or by making the video and audio processing modular in the same case and hence separately upgradable.

Alas, if Outlaw's product varied that much from everyone else's product in concept, even if it were better, many consumers might avoid something "too different."

I agree on the fate of HDMI as far as what we will see at some point in the future, but I have not been able to find anything online to indicate that there is a clear and sure-fire standard in place for how it will work - heck, there's even a chance (very slim, of course, but still a little promising since it would avert another VHS/Beta or DVD-A/SACD sort of format war) that HD-DVD and Blu-Ray may end up merged into a single format, and the final specs for such a beast are anyone's guess. That the specs will include HDMI for audio and video seems inevitable, but that alone isn't enough to design hardware around. I'd rather see good products get released now than have to wait for the format war to shake out before getting anything new.

The DVI switching has not been identified as being HDCP compliant, but I have to assume that it is - not doing so would be the same as glueing on a set of decorative connectors as far as usefulness is concerned.

I hope they can decide on one format. I wonder why they just dont use a fiber connection for all of the information. Working with fiber at SBC we have not yet found a limitation to the amount of data a fiber can carry. The limitation is the equipement on the ends deciphering the light. We have even put multiple wavelenghts on a single fiber feeding different equipement, such as our upcoming fttp and fttn. But alas that is for pocket protecting super smart people other than me.

there will always be format wars,until we can plug that optical cable into our head and THINK of how we want it decoded...i was going somewhere with this.

oh yeah,to bed!