It's not about being brave. It's about being smart. As a customer, I don't want to pay for the "privilege" of debugging a consumer electronics product. I don't have the time or the energy. That goes for both Outlaw and Emotiva.

Best,

Hank, you've forgotten about us Canadian boys north of the 45th parallel eh! BTW, North America also includes Mexico and if you check on the Outlaw's shopping cart, they ship to Mexico too.

As for reviews, I'm also interested in what the professional reviewers have to say and not only on the opinions of the buyers. I think that websites such as Audioholics and Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity will probably come out with reviews in a fairly timely manner, specially if the Outlaws send them early evaluation units. When buying gear, I like to take into consideration objective test measurements, not only subjective impressions and these two websites performs test measurements. I also wouldn't be surprised if Kalman Rubinson from Stereophile were to some day review the 978 or the XMC-1 it in his Music in the Round column. Kalman has a strong interest for reviewing more affordably priced multi-channel AV processors and receivers that include digital room correction; he's also very active on the AV Science Forum | AMPs, Receivers, and Processors Threads.

Hank, you've forgotten about us Canadian boys north of the 45th parallel eh! BTW, North America also includes Mexico and if you check on the Outlaw's shopping cart, they ship to Mexico too.


Much repect to our neighbors both north and south. In fact if the weather does not change in Texas, I would be proud to become a Canadian. If I am not mistaken, Hank meant the customers are US as in we the people on this forum and not USA.

I've found Kal's reviews to be honest and informative. It would be good to read what he thinks if he reviews the 978.

A wise thought and approach although a lot of outlaws that have been waiting for way too long may not be able to contend themselves and pull the trigger early. Well, there's always the 30 day money back guarantee...

Doggone it, I re-read Hank's message and you're correct AusTexRocker. Thanks for pointing that out to me.
Apologies for my misunderstanding of your post Hank.

Take 2 Hank .
Once the 978 ships and some folks here buy the unit, we don't only have to report back here or merely rely on the resources available on this Outlaw forum. At that point, we should also open up an "Outlaw Audio 978 AV Processor Official Thread" on the AV Science Forum | AMPs, Receivers, and Processors Threads. This will serve two purposes. First, it will help to make this Outlaw 978 processor better known to many more folks who don't know much about, it if anything at all. And second, it will bring in more expertize from a lot of experienced folks over at the AV Science forums, even if those people haven't acquired the unit or are waiting to see how things turn out, they can nonetheless make valuable contributions in terms of troubleshooting the unit by making test scenario suggestions.

I hope that Outlaw is also preparing to send out evaluation units to professional reviewers as I've mentioned in my previous post (Audioholics, Secrets of Home Theater and High Fidelity, Kalman at Stereophile, etc.). If the 978 turns out as good as Outlaw claims, those professional reviews will help tremendously to build up the 978's notoriety. Are you reading this Outlaw! It's time to walk the talk.

On the professional reviews, I'd like to agree with you, but I'm not so sure. It was over a year before the UMC by Emotiva was "professionally" reviewed, by Audioholics. In my opinion, they gave a rose colored glasses review since the thing was still pretty buggy at that point, and bugging customers to no end in some cases.

For myself, I'm looking for stable operation and better-than-avr SQ, with an excellent analog stage. But I won't be in a position to buy for about a year, so things will most likely be bug free by then.

I admit to not being totally familiar with Outlaw's pre-pro history. Have their models been still buggy after 1 1/2 years as Emotiva's latest was? We seem to be lumping the two companies together as if their track record is exactly the same. Is it? I know I see a far lower percentage of threads complaining about defects here than at Emotiva's forum.

As I said in my post, I'm interested in the pro reviews for the test measurements. All reviews have to be looked at with a certain level of criticism and sometimes downright skepticism as many pro reviewers often have conflicts of interest by the mere fact that the producers advertize on their websites and/or publications. The areas where professional reviews often fail is in the stability and reliability of the reviewed product. Because of review time constraints and the infeasibility of properly testing all the possible permutations in using a complex product, a reviewer cannot realistically find out about all the little bugs and stability issues unless they're really major and obvious, which in most cases they'll report back. That's when one has to resort to reading the forums to see what the buyers have to report on their experiences using the product.



Same here although I'd like to get much higher than AVR SQ. I hope the 978 can be better than an Integra DHC-80.3 in terms of SQ, which I believe is feasible considering that the 978 will have a far less complex design and feature set. I'm hoping that it could turn out to be the "Oppo BDP-95" of the AV processor market. A guy can dream, can't he? OK, so many I'm dreaming in Technicolor.



I can't speak to those issues as I have no personal experience with either Outlaw or Emotiva products and I haven't been following their reliability history. From my observations and detached perspective, I don't think that most folks around here are lumping the two companies together with respect to product stability.

If your dream is for Oppo BDP-95 sound and picture processing quality, then, unfortunately, I believe you are going to be disappointed. From everything I have seen (and it would be great to be wrong), the BDP-95 has better Sabre DACs and a better video processing chipset than the 978 will have. If you look at it. The price difference between the 93 and 95 is 1/3 the total expected cost of the 978.

I believe that the 978 will be a formidable unit in sound and picture quality but it will not be an Oppo 95 as 73Bruin said above. The Oppo BD-95 was reviewed and was found to have Sabre chipsets on par with units costing thousands more. It is very stable and has virtually no distortion. That unit alone costs 1k. This should not detract from the 978 as a processor.

Professional reviewers need time with the units to test out all bugs or whatnot and they seldom get the unit in their possession long enough to make a complete and tru-telling analysis. You will need several reviewers and would be owners like us to to a longer term analysis and report.