re Quote 1: Me saying I'd forgo it doesn't mean that I think Outlaw could sell a pre/pro without it. What I was getting at was that despite the clear benefits of the new technology, implementing a system which contains these new features (and perhaps several others) is not simple to do in an aggressive timeline when you walk among giants as competitors, and perhaps trying to please everyone. What made Outlaw different, imho, was their pattern of "less is more" and quality of important features over quantity of less important features. Sure HDMI is great. No need to argue that. But the fact that 3D is part of the latest version, to me, is somewhat of a bad joke to a lot of the original Outlaw crowd. Having 3D spec imposed on you by the masses when you were the same company that righteously rejected the notion of "Jazz/Concert/Hall" music fields is where I'm headed with this. WIth the good comes the bad I guess.

With Trinnov, I'm not entirely sure how easily integrated it was or is. But with anything in systems integration and design, what may seem like a gimme to the people wanting it may be problematic at best, or catastrophic at worst, for a design team whose requirements are changing or you rely on external sources to deliver these great features only to find that they're late and you might be putting the overall system together in half the time you allotted, AND turns out to be much more difficult than originally thought, putting the schedule at risk. I've seen this firsthand in my work. And here, we saw the unfolding drama of the 997. Outlaw is saying they are going to eliminate the external dependency issue by going in house. That too is surely a drama taking place in their company's confines. Hopefully their taking on more of the design and creation process will yield huge benefits for us. To assume it will go bad would be very pessimistic. To count on it going well would be ignoring the 997's history and to some extent, the 970/1070, models that were so close to being perfect but good examples of how important failing to get a couple major kinks out of all the deliverables can undermine what would likely have been perfect products were it not for some software bug(s).

For what it's worth, I'm absolutely 100% pulling for them. No place that I've stumbled into in the AV world like the Saloon where the people keep it civil and educational, and you have guys like Gonk who just seem to "be here" doing what he clearly likes to do - humbly helping all levels of enthusiasts, a real AV philanthropist. I for one hope we're all talking about the next Outlaw receiver/pre pro / stereo preamp soon and can put these worries to rest.