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.