Perform the test I laid out above. If you can't hear the difference, why would you spend more? If you can, then spend more. Your example is a little extreme and, of course, my response is necessarily impractical. Recall, however, that the comparison I suggested was between the Outlaw 990 and any other more expensive units, not $99 receivers. You're certainly not going to get the functionality, amplifier power, or build quality in a $99 receiver. But an $1,100 processor built by ultra-cheap foreign labor and sold on the Internet to bypass the retailer? Build that baby in America and sell it at retail, and it's $4,000 or more. Much different story.

<...the results [of blind tests] are many times disregarded... [because of their complexity]

They are disregarded because they embarrass the "golden ear" types who can do nothing else BUT criticize the method. In 1989, I met J. Gordon Holt at a Stereophile show and asked him why he hated blind testing. He replied with his usual candor, "Because I can never pass the damn things." For those of you who don't know, Holt is the father of subjective listening tests and the founder of Stereophile magazine which he originally published on an erratic schedule from his Philadelphia-suburb home before moving to Arizona. Later, he sold it to John Atkinson et al, who slicked it up, published on time, and went off the deep end editorially more often than was reasonable. In short, Big Daddy listener can't hear differences about which his erstwhile magazine raves.

Returning to the $99 analogy, compare a $99 DVD/CD player with digital auido out to one costing $5,000, and I will be positively flabbergasted if you can hear an ounce of difference. Video with its extra complexity will likely be another story, but even there, there are some $250 models with DVI output that may offer the same comparison.