Add another 6 months to the 978 ship date!!

... sorta shocks me. It was started as almost a "throw down" to the Outlaw management to give some info "or else". I find that rather silly. The official word was sent out in March Pretty clear stated in that update was that many months of work, some of which would be on timetables out of the control of the firm, lay ahead. At the end of that road, according to the official word, the expected information on ordering would be disseminated through Outlaw's regular channels -- primarily email and this site. Nothing has changed!

Their attempt to make the addition of the SR5007 a bit of a "special event" apparently did not have too much buy in from Marantz that has already supplied the specs, photos and features to other retailers. True to the Outlaw business model they have tried to make their offering more attractive via their value pricing. Not a bad plan, but hardly a sign that D7M and Outlaw are joined at the hip...

I see absolutely no correlation between the timing of offering from Marantz and the upcoming 978. Zero, If the regulatory and certification schedules are favorable maybe the 978 is right around the corner. If things are more backed up I fully except we'l have to wait every bit of the "many months"... {in unscientific calendar making I believe folks who say "a couple of months" mean more than one and not quite three", a "few months" in such term means more than two and less than six, and "many months" is anything short of a year...).

The features being so uniform access the SRx007 line frankly don't give me much hope of the rumored AVx007 being much of an upgrade, though I'll keep those comment confined to the Marantz threads for simplicity.

(and despite my quoting of XenonMan please don't feel that anything is directed to any one poster on this thread, more of a general shout out at the whole idea of forcing the Outlaws to ever spill the beans about anything lately...)

Ho Hum...YADT (yet another delay tactic) Just got off the Sneak Preview site where the SR5007 receiver is the feature of the day.

Is there really a demand for receivers? I get the impression that given the state of Outlaw's inventory, they would like us to dump our amps and pre/pros and just simplify our systems with the occasional purchase of a receiver. They have to "throw us a little bait" occasionally or there would be no point in checking in here more often than every couple years, as one gunslinger put it. I certainly wouldn't advise anyone who needs a preamp to wait. When and if it appears, whether to purchase it will be a real-time decision you make then.

The correlation I see between the release of another piece of gear which will compete with the 978 is simply that several years back, Outlaw decided to offer the Onkyo PR-SC886 as a "temporary" solution to the lack of a processor beyond the 990 so that customers would have an Outlaw supported processor to match up with an Outlaw amp. This solution has continued with various offering from Onkyo and Marantz for the last 3 years through the 997/998/978 development process. As I see it , as long as Outlaw feels the need to supply us with an alternate processor/receiver, they do not have a processor of their own on the immediate horizon. A new offering to me is a veiled update that the 978 is not in our immediate future.

Consider also, that Outlaw perceives us as audiophiles, and as such, may all have secondary systems that are above average and therefore we might want to buy a very good receiver for our second systems. Pretty good marketing as I see it.

IMO, the best strategy would have been to continue selling the 990 as other companies like ATI Amplifiers and Parasound have continued to sell their out-dated pre-amps and processors. At least with Outlaw there's some talk of a new model. Those other two companies have nothing in the wind that I've heard of.

Hank, you have been a voice of reason on this forum, but I see this offering as nothing but an attempt to keep Outlaw viable. I still believe that the 978 is in beta (the absence of Gonk is critical here) and this is simply a delaying tactic as previously stated. I do not see this announcement as good marketing. Heck my second system has an old Denon receiver doing AVR duties. (Although I may not be a true audiophile ) I have no intention in changing that setup anytime in the future. It still amazes me that Outlaw offers competitors products. Maybe I am clueless about good marketing.

Another nail in the delay coffin of the 978. This isn't a home theater forum...its the forum of the absurd. The endless discussion on the 978 is alienating fans of Outlaw. As I posted before, I want to buy the 978 but when it's time to buy and nothing is in the tangibles by Outlaw I will be knocking on Marantz' door.

As I have posted before, Outlaw would probably have been better served continuing with the partnership with Sherwood Newcastle and the Korean firm that made the 990.

Shoulda coulda woulda...

Honestly, have you talked to any dealers that dealt in the Sherwood products? The Trinnov was / is among the slickest setups ever for getting eq / balance / delay / phase settings optimized auto-magically BUT the rest of that unit has been plagued with qc / reliability / issues and an UI that is from the dark ages of OSD.

Personally I would never put up with those kind of issues in any product, especially one that was supposed to be a good long term investment...

The issue of whether it would've made sense to stick with a unit that offered better SQ / reliability but ZERO in the way of modern connectivity / convenience / calibration is similarly easy for me to give a thumbs down -- heck how many folks have weighed in here saying that even the fabulous range of modern convenience items that are rolled into units like 5007 are not appealing enough to overlook lack of XT32 or balanced outputs? It is one thing to try a play at "retro purist" (like the P7) and another to have a stack of slick source devices that have no way to be "plumbed" into a modern AV setup. I am sure the legions of folks that drive their flat panels or projectors EXCLUSIVELY through an Oppo are happy to have the P7 but I sorta like to have surround on more than just that one source and there is no way my goofy room is ever gonna get by w/o a bunch of EQ...

Ultimately the choice of a "manufacturing partner" is one of those "live and learn" kind of things. I remember back when even the much admired Apple was ridiculed for having notoriously short inventory. Now they are a model of how to have the "pipeline" ready to unleash the floodgate of product on its eager buyers. That did not happen overnight. If they made foolish choices in manufacturing partners that could have "delivered" quantity but had angry hordes of DOA / malfunctioning units with poor qc they would have been wiped out. As for the 978 I will gladly endure a long development cycle so long as the units "just work" from the first power-up until well into the next "next big thing", which by the looks of what minor headway has been made by firms outside the mainstream is looking pretty meager...