Thanks for your response Gonk. I may have been mistaken regarding some pricing, but it's that $500-$700 price range that's at my top end. Here's hoping Outlaw can land in that price range in the future or maybe team up with Onkyo on a receiver in that area.

Hope everyone had a good holiday!

It would be fun to see - I've got a co-worker who I've been slowly help build a home theater, and a budget Outlaw processor combined with a 7075 would be a killer setup for him. He just bought my dad's old '68 Mustang fastback and is working on getting it back on the road, though, so further upgrades are probably a ways down the road for him.

Just buy Emotiva's UMC-1. Yeah. I said it.

I saw that they shipped the first few pre-orders late this week. Still waiting to see the manual posted online - not clear on why they decided to omit source buttons on the remote, as that would seen to be a rather major inconvenience.

If you're not in the pre-order list, though, it may be a couple months before you can get one anyway.

Isn’t it a pain waiting for something you are really interested in or want? I'm still using an older Sony receiver (preamp outs to external power amps) as a controller/processor for movie sound. It is functioning properly, so I do not feel a great urge to buy something really-really-soon. If the Sony broke (and I couldn't fix it), that would be a different story.

I'm AM interested in someday upgrading to a current controller/processor but my exquisite taste (wink-wink) is not matched by my budget. No Anthem gear for me. The price to performance ratio of Outlaw gear is great. I'm (semi) content to let Outlaw work the bugs out of the 997 before I buy one. As an EE, I know that something as complex as the 997 will take a lot of time to get to production status, and even then there may still be an issue or two (that hopefully a firmware update will fix).

Anyway, release the 997 when it is ready, not before.

The UMC-1 had it's fair share of delays as well.
Some bugs still appear to be evident, but they claim they should be simple firmware updates. Also mentioned in their webcast was that anyone getting on the preorder list now, could expect delivery possibly in April.

Also, for 5 times the price of the UMC, you can get the Sherbourne PT-7020. With the exception of one RU extra in height, different front panels, and the balanced outputs on the back panel, these 2 units appear to be identical.

Sherwood has recently been providing R972 units with the latest firmware to various magazines for formal review. Kal Rubinson ("Music in the Round" Contributing Editor, Stereophile Magazine) has stated that his review will appear in the May 2010 issue.

I wonder if there will ever be a Model 997?

At first glance, the UMC1 was tempting, if used in conjunction with the 990 it could be the best of all possible worlds for the price of an SMS-1 , right ? WRONG!
From all accounts the EMO equalization doesn't amount to much.
The video processing is inferior to what you would get straight from an Oppo BD-83.
There are a lot of inputs, it will process most formats ( less DSD) and it will process everything to HDMI. If that's all that you want, $699.00 is a sweet deal. Go for it.
This ain't no 997, or at least what I anticipate the 997 being.

I've been wondering the same thing. I certainly hope so.