Well, I decided to give the Emotiva receiver a try. What with the Carver platform and digital amps, I doubt it'll sound as good as the Outlaw, but I'm tired of fighting the bugs in the 1070.

And yes... I updated the firmware each time a new version was available. The weird thing is that the updates always seemed to fix things at first, but then the same old bugs returned. I've always thought there must be some significance to this, but I have no idea what it might be.

I don't know what other receiver to try besides the Emotiva... I hauled home and returned several Japanese-brand receivers before buying the 1070. None of them sounded very good to me. Ditto for the NAD receiver I tried (wasn't impressed by that one at all).

So I've got my fingers crossed about the Emotiva

David,

Stay with Outlaw!!!!!!!!

I'll always deal with the bugs and the wife's irked comments (like last night when I'm switching inputs 5 times to get my HD-DVD video onscreen) for that Outlaw sound

but do get back to us with your feedback David.

I'm in the same boat David...spoiled by the sound, but frustrated with the bugs. Let us know how the Emotiva compares.

One thing Emotiva doesn't seem to have is the lip synch, a feature I, one, truly feel I wouldn't be able to do without.

I have it at 40ms and bump it up to roughly 100ms for Comcast's "On demand".

That is correct - none of the Emotiva products have lip sync adjustment. The DMC, MMC, and DMR use an older Sunfire platform and the LMC uses the same DSP chip as Outlaw's old Model 950 - in both cases, the processor doesn't support AV sync.

I have a feeling that this is David's impression about Emotiva DMR-1, but I might be wrong, of course.

Here it is

Yeah, that's the link to my "never-ending" review of the Emotiva

As you'll note there, I ended up returning the Emotiva. It's a very powerful-sounding and pretty darn awesome receiver, but there's something not quite right with the high-frequency response. And it lacks the open sound of the Outlaw 1070.

What I need is the Outlaw sound in a more powerful and reliable product. And, of course, that'd be their separates. But I had a carpenter out Saturday to get an estimate on re-building my entertainment center... $2000! Even worse than I had thought. It's a beautiful piece of cabinet work, but I'm seriously thinking of just grabbing the Black and Decker and attacking it myself

The 1070 is aweome yet I just ordered a used Anthem MCA 5 Series 2 amp. Using a HQ amp will make the sound much more to me liking.

Liz

David - Is it the 990 that won't fit in your entertainment center...or just no room for a seperate amp?

I just replaced my second 1070 with a 970/7075 combo, and it's a very compact pair. I only had a few problems with the last 1070...and haven't had any issues with the 970 (yet). I'm planning on living with any issues until the 970's replacement is released.