I have a 1070 with a serious no audio problem, and the firmware did not fix it. My unit has no audio 99% of the time. The fix for me is to put it in standby and then quickly select an input source, turning it back on. I love the unit but would NEVER recommend one knowing the problems the unit might have. It's a shame, cause the 1070 had such promise.

I'm sorry to read about your woes nik...
have you contacted Outlaw with that ?
maybe your unit has supplemental issues...

My problems with the 1070 haven't been as bad as yours....
I still love my 1070...even when it throws a fit and won't respond...

I'm perplexed. According to gonk (and there is no reason to doubt his knowledge, he seems to know everything related to Outlaw Audio), model 1070 was launched almost two years ago. And it still exhibits the "no audio" bug after such a long period of time?
I could explain this in one of these two ways.

1. There is something wrong with the Cirrus Logic DSP chip and Outlaw either can do nothing about it or tries to work around an error in the chip, to avoid a costly recall.
2. The team writing the firmware simply cannot rise to the task. I apologize to the software team if I'm wrong (I am myself a programmer and software designer, with over 20 years in the field, I know how tough it is out there, but I also know how badly code is written some times).

Nevertheless, almost two years...

This is a major hardware design problem (CS42528 DAC implementation) and Outlaw try to work around by a software fix to avoid a costly recall.

I think the software team did a great job but nothing they can do without a hardware modification.

I decide to keep my 970 and I will not expect any fix just by a firmware upgrade any time in the future.

The audio bug will live with the 1070/970 until this porduct will be discontinued.

Well, the "no audio bug" didn't actually arise until early 2006 or so (shortly after the 970 launch, which was several months after the late summer/early fall 2005 launch of the 1070). That puts it at more than one year, but much less than two.

Here's the best explanation that I have been able to come up with, based on my observations of the firmware releases and previous Outlaw product support. The bug was very difficult to reproduce and isolate, so the firmware team was chasing a ghost for a good chunk of 2006. The beta released earlier this year seemed to make significant improvements for most users, but I'm told they haven't quit yet.

Would they suck it up and deal with a hardware-related recall if it came to that? History says yes - they did exactly that with the 950. Like everyone here (including Outlaw), I'd love to see a final, iron-clad resolution to this, whether purely software-based or a mix of software and hardware.

Was there any report of any audio-related bug that's not "total" and thus immediately identifiable?
I mean, was there a case of someone reporting too low a level in the surround speakers which got restored after the system was cycled, like it's the case with the "no audio" bug?
Seeing the "no audio" bug still rearing its ugly head after such a long time plus other firmware-related issues, I tend to lose confidence in the unit.
Having "no audio" is immediately identifiable, but too low a surround level, that might be legit or not.
I was watching the NBA playoffs and I realized a significant increase in surround sound loudness when the transmission in 3/2.1 resumed after a commercial in Dolby 2 channel mode. The problem was that before the commercial I was feeling that the sports arena atmosphere was missing, but I thought that that's the way the transmission was. When after the commercial interruption the sound came to what I was expecting, I became aware of yet another POTENTIAL manifestation of the buggy firmware/1070 combination.
I do hope that I'm imagining things, for a total audio interruption I could live with, but not to trust that the unit fairly reproduces what it's supposed to even when it's working, that's too much to bear.
Am I alone on this one?

My faith in broadcasters getting HD broadcasts right typically approaches negative numbers - I've had local affiliates strip the left and right channels out of a 5.1 signal and send them out as Dolby 2.0 (leaving the center channel dialog in data limbo). Since I've not heard of any similar problems from 1070 or 970 owners, I would suspect the broadcast and not the processor.

That's darn good news. And coming from you, gonk, I have no doubt that it might have been the broadcast.
Now, on a different note, how comes Outlaw and Sherwood shared the same blueprint for what was to become the 990? What's the tie between them?

Sherwood is an old US brand that was bought some years ago by Korean corporation Etronics - they now use it as their "in-house" brand, but they also manufacture for lots of other people (I suspect that Sherwood makes up a relatively small portion of their total manufacturing volume). Etronics developed the P-965 platform, and when Outlaw started contemplating a successor to the Model 950 they found that the P-965 was a very good foundation that they could modify relatively readily into something that met their goals well. As a result, Outlaw partnered with Etronics, modified the P-965, and the 990 was born.