The Sherwood/Newcastle is getting Auto-EQ. Will the 990 also get it?

http://www.avsforum.com/avs-vb/showthread.php?t=565670

It is an interesting question - Outlaw has indicated in the past that they are not particularly impressed with the form of auto-EQ available from Cirrus (which looks to be what Sherwood is using), so I would suspect that the possibility exists that Outlaw would choose not to do this. Also, the price to add EQ to an existing P-965 is $100 plus shipping to the factory - that's a pretty penny for an EQ that some would suggest is not real beneficial. It'll be curious to see what happens, that's for sure.

I wonder if the hardware change involved is as straightforward as the Model 950's DTS-ES fix (swapping out a chip with a standard extractor and popping in a new chip), or if there is soldering involved...

It was mentioned on another thread on AVS that it is a chip swap. A memory chip with more capacity.

7-bands at 1/12th octave seems pretty good to me.

I agree, $100 may be tough for some to swallow, but easy for some. New units after mid-August will have it already.

Very interesting in this price point. I think the Emotiva UL will be left wanting.

As has been pointed out in this thread, our colleagues at Sherwood are about to release an upgrade package including an “auto-eq” function for some of their products that share a similar platform with the Model 990. We are currently testing solutions that add an auto-eq function to the Model 990 as part of a planned software maintenance upgrade that both improves its functionality and addresses certain issues that have been brought to our attention. However, at this point the auto-eq system’s performance does not meet our standards, and we will not release it until we are completely satisfied with both its overall accuracy (especially in setup) and the control menus that drive it. (It should be also be mentioned here that while the Model 990 shares many aspects of its hardware platform with other products, the software menus and control system are uniquely Outlaw’s.) We are proud of our control system and will make certain that any additional features maintain the same level of flexibility and ease of use.

Right now our first priority is to complete the maintenance upgrade as a standalone release, with auto-eq to follow when it is ready. Please understand that while our pre-release testing has already validated the Model 990’s hardware to successfully perform any upgrades via USB or RS-232 connections, it will still take some time for the actual software upgrade to be completed and for us to put it through the required validation and beta testing.

The Outlaws

Sounds good to me. Thanks for the update Scott.

Thank you for keeping us updated,and informed Scott.It is appreciated.

John

Cool, Scott, thanks for keeping the 'slingers in the loop.

Someone asked this in the Sherwood thread but didn't get an answer yet. Want I want to know is if you can just run it on the Subwoofer channel only? I would just as soon keep the PEQ off the other seven channels. I'd also be curious if you can adjust the actual PEQ filters manually. Done right this could obsolete the BFD and R-DES for the subwoofer.

That is a very good question, obie_fl, and one that I look forward to hearing the answer to. From Scott's comments, it sounds like any future auto EQ for the 990 will not necessarily be the same as the Sherwood's - if they do come up with a satisfactory EQ, the inclusion of an option to limit it to the subwoofer output along with manual control of the EQ would be particularly presuasive reasons to introduce it.

obie: I'd really doubt that you could EQ the sub only. Indeed, most of the auto-eq systems don't do all that great a job with low frequencies. Everyone I've seen requires you to run it through all channels or none.