Gonk: Any idea about that other D&M Holdings company - McIntosh? It sure seems that an Outlaw designed 978 with their emphasis on overall sound quality and HDMI audio capabilities, might provide an excellent basis for building a future McIntosh 136 replacement.

By the way, Happy Birthday!

I don't see McIntosh wanting to partner with an entity like Outlaw for such development. For one thing, they can make lots more by putting such R&D work into their own products, which sell for much higher margins. For another thing, they presumably want to preserve their market image. Partnering with an internet-direct company that focuses more on the balance of performance and value doesn't fit with that image.

It's more likely that Outlaw is working from scratch with their manufacturing partner (who is likely somebody like Eastech, the manufacturer they worked with on the Model 1050 and Model 950, rather than an entity like D&M) to develop the Model 978's analog section.


Thanks!

The Lexicon mess was a somewhat different animal, I think. A very high-profile animal, certainly, but also different. It was a case of a company taking a fundamentally sound product, wrapping it in a fancier brand name, and upcharging 700% for it (all while not adding anything measurable except more mass around the loader, and while being very slow to provide firmware updates). If Outlaw were to partner with somebody like Marantz, we would be seeing the opposite: a company taking a fundamentally sound product, tweaking it to fit their market needs, and selling it for less money. I think that makes it less likely.

I also trust Outlaw to be straight with us when they say they're developing the Model 978 and Model 998 from the ground up, not modifying somebody else's existing design. Not only does that rule out "re-badging" a Marantz (or a McIntosh), but it actually reduces the likelihood of any sort of development partnership with Marantz. After all, if you look at the big brands (Denon, Marantz, Onkyo, Integra, Yamaha, ...), their lines are all built around the idea of a core architecture in support of an entire product line - each company offering line-ups in which incremental upgrades in build quality, amplifier power, video processing, analog audio parts selection, user interface "prettiness", and ancillary features (network support, etc.) define the steps up in cost while significant chunks of core DSP code exist throughout most of the line. That's the only way that even those giants can sustain annual release cycles for lines that offer as many as half a dozen (or more) separate receiver models. They would have no interest in spending time doing something completely different for a single (or a couple) individual products sold under someone else's name. I could always be wrong, but I don't see a strong business case for a Marantz-Outlaw partnership to develop the Model 978 and Model 998.

I think in the case of Oppo though, not to get too philosophical here, but I remember the words of an article written several years ago by the late great writer in the former Stereo Review, Julian Hirsch, who said and I paraphrase, "any company with half decent engineering can build a product to a certain spec, by being able to buy the best parts, bring it to market and charge anything they want for it; the real engineering prowess comes when one can build a competitive performing product with a similar spec for a fraction of the cost AND price, bring it to market and still make a reasonable profit on its sale". I believe a specialty company like Oppo kind of set the world on its ear with its products and a company like Lexicon realized they just couldn't do what Oppo did.

Perhaps this is all irrelevant but it is kind of interesting.