Wow, I didn't realize D&M was now "D+M" and based in NJ. My bad.
I don't feel as confident as others that the identity of the guilty party will be known with certainly at some point. End even if so, that might take a while. Plus gathering information now will help discern between fact and rumor at some point in the future. So a updated list of the suspects:

1) NAD
2) D+M Holdings
3) Anthem
4) Parasound
5) ATI/B&K

If it was D+M, I think Outlaw would still offer their products, at least for as long as it takes their current supply or commercial arrangement to run out. Outlaw doesn't sell Marantz stuff to help Marantz, they do so to keep some processor revenue coming in to keep their staff busy, keep some activity on the site, keep processor+amp packages going, etc., and maybe make a little margin on the business while they are at it. All of those things become even more important with the cancelation of the 978. Immediately liquidating Marantz inventory would be pouting. Revenge takes longer.

I think we can rule out D+M Holdings as most of their stuff is built at Inkel/Sherwood and we know that relationship likely dissolved with the Model 997. I hate to say it but it is looking more and more like Anthem/Sonic Frontiers to me.

Who is vetting these manufacturers? If they worked where I do, there would be a pink slip on their desk tomorrow morning. The past two processors in the tank because the designers/manufacturers were incompetent. Who continues to pick these places?

I long for the early days when truly unique products filled the shelves. Where are the folks that thought up those products? The past 5 years seem to have a different direction than the first 5.

The early days included products developed in the same manner as the Model 978 (including the Model 1050 and Model 950), and maybe the most successful product they've had (Model 990) was developed in partnership with the same company that laid an egg with the Model 997's platform.

Refresh my memory, wasn't the 990 discontinued because the manufacturer couldn't get certain parts?

So the original manufacturer produced the 950 & 1050. I would assume those products were considered successful.
Another manufacturer for the 990, also successful but after a time couldn't continue production do to lack of components. (Poor planning on someones part)
Continue with that same company for the 997 (debacle)
Move to yet another company for the 978 (giant debacle)

See a trend?

The facts that gonk laid out match my reollection of previous Outlaw offerings and it is not unlike what happened in the post WWII era when various smaller American consuer electronics manufacturing concerns were sprouting up. Some of these were firms that had successfully made the transition from selling radios to consumers prior to the war, through the era of dedicating resources to military needs and finally getting on board with the "next new thing" of TV. Probably the most famous / long-lived such firm is Curtis-Mathes. Many of the "classic" hi-fi brand names had similar periods of "turmoil" in how they sourced production... The proliferation of oddly "branded" flat panel TVs of generally mediocre quality / performance seems to be the new darling of SE Asian electronics manufacturing. I really wonder what happened to the folks that certainly had the skills to design / build / market quality products in the era of higher end CRTs and such that once flowed from Japan and other higher wage Asian countries.

I don't think there is anything nefarious about Outlaw's decision to only hint at which competitor forced its manufacturing partner to "knife the baby". The benefit to Outlaw in publicly disclosing such info is nil. For those that were eagerly awaiting the 978's availability the knowledge that another firm may offer a similarly equipped product would send some buyers to that competitor. Further inflamming the notoriusly difficult competitive environement by taking a feud into the eye of the public would be a very risky and a shabby way to conduct one's relationships in a world of shifting alliances...

Are there firms with employees that coud have dodged these pitfalls? Maybe, but as I said earlier, folks seem to forget that even contracts negiotiated between giants in the US micro-electronics world like IBM and Motorola come to unexpected ends; when Apple put an end to the previously negotiated "cloning" of PowerPC based machines it essentially drove Motorola out of the personal computer business and caused the demise of several smaller firms that were both innovative and had many loyal customers. The degree to which this radical shift in strategy was successfully handled by the team that Steve Jobs brought back to Apple is largely the foundation for the firm's current success. If some such shift was instigated by D+M (maybe to ensure the survival of McIntosh more than allowing the creation of an AV70007...) then really there are bigger things to worry about. Does anyone really want to see McIntosh go the way of the IBM's personal computer business, as a division of a firm like Lenovo???


When it comes to the hows and whys of the pricing of US ASSEMBLED audio equipment I think there is a misconception that ONLY "cost no object" brands can be marketed in such a manner. This is false, the decision for esoteric dreamers to price their products like exotic automobiles is a function of their own out-dated fantasies. Market realities are far different. The printed circuit boards and bits like capacitors, resistors, stock ICs and various transistors can be put together here for about the same price as elsewhere. (there are analysts that have verified this is NOT where the cost savings in products like the iPhone come from) Further evidence of this is in the fair number of musical instruent amps and even small scale manufacturers that can sell DACs , tube and even IC two channel (or amp only) products at a competitive prices. Similarly the consensus of most folks that need to hire people with expertise in the kinds of software level design / integration that has to happen for products with licensed DSPs, advanced user interfaces / OSD is that cost savings in these areas are minimal -- any decreased personel costs are offset by the longer development cycle and overrall steeper learning curve. While there are signficant differences in the total "line assembly" costs needing huge facilities and massive logistical support, this is largely offset by the fact that most US based audio firms have so small a volume that the mass scale effects are not significant.

What can be done to get a real product into the hands of consumers that want a great product at a price that tag that does not look like a Buggatti Veryon of audio?? I suspect that with a bit of "bush beating" (ideally through message boards / internet forums , especiallly of those that are advancing the "Maker community" / Arduino...) an appropriately skilled cadre of people could be aggregated to ensure that no one firm would have the power to sink a project. Maybe instead of Outlaw trying to find a more "reliable" manufacturing partner they ought to rethnk their role, let me give an example: In my area (suburbs of Chicago) there are some active "mass builders" that develop large tracts of homes and market them, these mass builders use a variety of labor some of which is from employees, other from independent skilled carpenters / roofers, as well as a range of subcontractoring firms that provide specialized skills / materials like excavation and concrete. There are also many smaller "builders" that largely just market more of a 'custom' home. Most such firms are little more than a "supervisory general contractor" who subcontracts out ALL the actual construction AND the design / engineering. Of course there are also independant general contractors that really just do renovation / additions to woner's specification that compete with more integrated firms marketing "one stop shoppng" for having your kitchen or bath overhauled to achieve some "dream look". Finally there are tradespeople that work for themselves generally getting only a portion of work for any job. In CE it looks like the old school "mass builder" model is dead. The current model seems to have skipped over a couple of iterations of having independant "design professionals" and perhaps getting back to something that is a little more focused on "craftsmen" ( or using ethical partners in perhaps Japan???) will solve some issues, especially given the shrinking market for any quality audio equipment. Honestly to borrow from another "production model" that is common among automotive hobbyists maybe if small firm "pre-pros" were built like a "run" of reproduction headers or similar new cast / plated body parts to restore one's classic car (and maybe that was the 990 model, but lack of communication was the only pitfall) the "dead ends" of the 998 / 978 could be avoided. I think I would be OK laying doing a deposit to reserve my "one of 1500" or whatever the "parts in inventory" production run would have to be to fit the model of getting headers for a muscle car...

Then again I might be nuts and maybe the complexity of today's consumer electronics and the ruthlessness of the marketplace are incompatible with delivering value and quality but at this point I sure think some new approaches are worth trying...

Eastech was the manufacturing partner (involved in development as well) for the Model 1050, Model 950, and Model 1070/970.

Etronics (now Inkel) was the Model 990 manufacturing partner. The Model 990 was developed using their Sherwood R-965/P-965 platform, but with some hardware changes (including XLR outputs and DVI switching) and a ton of new firmware. I don't recall why it was discontinued. I don't remember a parts availability problem (which isn't necessarily anybody's fault - see OPPO Digital's BDP-83 and BDP-80, both of which were discontinued because Sony quit making a critical part and redesigning around a replacement was deemed too expensive to be worth doing). I know it was in production for a number of years, though, and by the end there were more and more people commenting on its "outdated" feature set. At some point, it was appropriate to call it quits.

The Model 997 could easily have been shipped. Outlaw chose not to because their partner, who had already been successful for them with the Model 990, couldn't meet their requirements. Rather than sell something that they knew wouldn't satisfy Outlaw customers, they walked away. Tough choice to have to make. The biggest lesson there was likely to make sure they were more involved early in the design process, even if it was a platform that would be shared with another company. They applied that lesson to the Model 978, which was developed in the same style as the Eastech products (ground-up designs in which Outlaw had active oversight and involvement from the start).

The Model 978 development was apparently going well, as mentioned in the description of Scott's visits to the factory to help oversee design work. Predicting a disaster like that would seem difficult.

I don't buy D+M, because of the current relationship between Outlaw and Marantz, and because I really wouldn't think that Denon and Marantz would consider Outlaw competition. Online sales vs B&M, and the respective size of each.

I don't buy Anthem, because they don't sell a pre/pro in the same price range as the 978 would be. Plus, I view ARC and Audyssey as two separate markets, even though they do the same thing.

Parasound does not sell SSPs any longer. I don't understand why people keep saying they could be the cause. Plus, as far as I know, they manufacture in Taiwan, not China.

And I don't buy ATI/B&K either. Outlaw has a very good relationship with them in terms of their amps.

So that leaves ...

I don't think it can be anyone else but NAD. More similar company size than Denon/Marantz, and it would not surprise me in the least if they have an XT32 SSP coming out in the next 6 months.

Like I said on page 2 of this thread, my top suspects are also NAD and Anthem with the most likely being NAD. I believe that Kevin's analysis is correct. I had the same arguments come to mind when thinking of the other possible candidates.

However since NAD uses it's Modular Design Construction (MDC) architecture where the digital features are basically integrated onto modular PCB cards that get plugged into a socket like a PCI card on a PC, they may release a new MDC module with MultEQ XT32 sometime in the future. Although as I commented on another thread months ago, NAD hasn't impressed me with their MDC concept as some of their competitors (Denon and Onkyo/Integra) have already churned out two new generations of processors and AVRs with MultEQ XT32 while NAD has been stuck on XT during the same time frame (two years) with processors and AVRs that offers less features and cost more. One of the selling points of having a modular architecture is a quicker turn around on new features as all you have to change is a relatively small PCB.

And that selling point is why people so often push for modular surround processor designs for companies like Outlaw. The reality, though, is that nobody seems to have ever successfully made it work. Plenty have tried, including some big names (Onkyo) and some smaller names (NAD). None have been able to translate the promise of easy modular upgrades into actual practice, at least not fast enough or consistently enough to make much of an impression.

The closest I think anyone has come to this are Anthem and Lexicon. Anthem took the AVM20 platform and built off of it for over a decade (and counting), with a mix of new products (AVM30, AVM40, AVM50, Statement D1, Statement D2, AVM50v2, Statement D2v2) and upgrades to those products (adding ARC to existing units, etc.). None of it was truly modular, and most required either buying a new unit or handing the existing unit off to a dealer or the factory for the upgrades. None of it was cheap, either, and at this point there's probably precious little left from the AVM20 (aside from the chassis dimensions and basic layout of the faceplate) in the current hardware. Lexicon's MC12 has been similar, with the basic platform tweaked, upgraded, and expanded over the course of many years. Neither was ever really marketed as "modular", though.