I've followed the antics of SN, in general, and Jeff Hipps, in particular, for almost a year. In my opinion, his comments have been inaccurate and misleading in terms of when the product would ship. One could shift the "blame" all over the place, but I find it hard to believe that SN/Hipps was being straight with people. If he/they didn't know the true nature of the delays, they *should* have.

As far as Outlaw is concerned, they're in a pickle. What do you do when your supplier isn't straight with you or the market about the timeline for delivery of a critical product? Whether that misinformation is the result of intentional misdirection or incompetence really doesn't matter. At the end of the day, your brand suffers and it costs you money.

This is something that has bugged me, as well. The information that has gone out from Sherwood to the general public has been ruthlessly ridiculed at AVS, and it is hard to fault people much for that when the information has been wrong so many times. We've talked about it some on the saloon over the last year or so, but the R-972 has been public knowledge for about 35 months now and has seen over two years of delays. Even if the final product is excellent, that's going to haunt the 972. The longer the situation is drawn out, the worse it will be.

Why have there been all of those delays? Was there separate (accurate) schedule information going to business partners at the same time publicly-disclosed schedules were broken? That would mean the public information was a deception, which would be a very bad thing and profoundly stupid - lying about deadlines you know are false is a good way to alienate customers and anger dealers. It would also make me very uncomfortable if I were one of those business partners, both because of the deception and because of the potential damage it could cause in the marketplace. I have a hard time believing that Sherwood could be crazy enough to do that on even a small scale, much less one that spanned years. The alternative, though, is that the same information (presumably more detailed but still from the same master schedule) was also going to business partners, all of it based on a sincere belief by Sherwood that it was accurate. That at least is not malicious, and it lacks the insane subterfuge, but it means that Sherwood had some problems with their development process' schedule - problems that have persisted and apparently not been sufficiently accounted for within Sherwood. It also means their business partners (such as Outlaw) must make long-reaching and expensive business decisions based on well-intentioned but flawed data. That would have to classify as the stuff of business nightmares.
Excellent point.

I would argue that to some small extent we are all business partners with SN and Outlaw. Most of us own Outlaw gear which is still under an excellent 5 year warranty which could be put in jeopardy by the deceptive practices of SN towards the very people they want to convince to buy their creations. I can tell you that I jumped to the Onkyo even though I have heard about service issues and the warranty is way shorter partly because I don't know if either of the two main partners will make it through these tough times and I got tired of justifying the wait. Even with the loyalty discount I saved $100 over the 997 and got a proven piece of gear.

Apparently Noah over at avsforums has jumped ship and returned his 972 and went with a Denon.

I'm still hanging in there as it's really not necessary for me to upgrade, even though I have the urge.

From what I have read over there, Noah went through quite a tussle trying to get the firmware updates out of SN only to find they didn't fix the issues. I think what OPPO did with the BDP-83 EAP is the best way to test the gear out while keeping everyone in the loop as to its progress. From what Gonk reported, I got the impression that the BDP-83 was pretty close when the EAP started and all they had to do was fine tune it. I don't get that same warm fuzzy about the 972. Of course there are only a few out there and most of those aren't posting about it.

Boy, if Noah gave up on the 972, things must be very, very bad.

He had really been trying to get his 972 to work, put in a lot of effort, and it seemed like he remained very loyal to SN though the process, despite the plethora of vocal detractors.

This can't be good news for Sherwood Newcastle, at all. It's going to be a hard sell to audiophiles at this point. It would be hard to imagine a worse way to market a "new" two to three year old product.

I really hope that the Outlaw version can overcome this setback, but the way the two companies are involved will probably end up tainting their efforts from a lot of consumer's viewpoints. They will have their work cut out for them.

Scott

I'm sure this has been said elsewhere, but I don't believe the debacle of the 997 delays lays in Outlaw's court. I also believe it would be in bad form for them to come out and talk about the failures SN has had in delivering a reliable product in a timely manner.

This is obviously affecting both companies bottom line and is a bit embarrassing, but it wouldn't make business sense to point fingers and burn bridges. It's really unfortunate for both companies and I think it was smart for outlaw to offer competitor products to appease potential purchases waiting for a release.

I can only imagine how much this affects Outlaw Audio on so many levels. I hope things turn around for them so they can continue selling awesome products.

Well said, Retep...

FWIW, my sympathies go out to Peter and Co. on this one. While they've been waiting for the 997 to get through development, Audyssey and THX have released new iterations of their processing techs with additional multichannel capabilities, which makes the Trinnov a slightly less compelling selling point. I'm pretty sure several heated long distance calls have been placed between Outlaw Central and various hardware developers.

Trinnov's implementation issues are making the decision to go with a product that's equipped with Audyssey much more compelling. I really want to see Outlaw be successful with the 997, but Sherwood isn't doing them any favors at this point.