I don't quite agree with your first paragraph, instead I think that SQ or sonic performance is not something I would automatically associate with being state of the art, at least up to a point. And for a company like Outlaw who can bring excellent audio products to market for well below retail, something like this product, even though it's considered entry level, could be an excellent performer.

Down the road I'll be looking for a 2 channel pre amp, something that almost no one buys any more as they are so antiquated. Yet they can cost thousands of dollars and not even have bass or treble controls. So I agree that one needs to take a wait and see approach, we've been surprised before around here.

Here's the thing...

Do I think it's possible to create a bare bones processor with decent sound quality on a frugal budget? Yes. The silicon is out there.

Do I think people will buy a relatively inexpensive bare bones processor with decent sound quality that lacks room correction? I'm inclined to think not...at least not in quantities that would be interesting to a company like outlaw. I hope I'm mistaken.

A few months ago, I would have had a different answer to the second question. I thought my room was OK, my amp was King Kong, and that I didn't want any of that fancy stuff in the signal path. Since then, I've had a chance to play with and use Audyssey room correction. There's no going back. And that's coming from someone who used to be happy with 2 channels of EL34 goodness fed to circa-1990 Dahlquist speakers through a tricked-out Dynaco pre-amp. How the times have changed.

I'll be curious to hear the new unit and may even order one to audition it, but Outlaw's got a tough row to hoe here.

Best,

Ritz2, you've undergone a radical transformation from analog tube to totally digital. I know only one local audiophile who's done that and it was because he became so tired of caring for records and stylii and the hassle of pulling out a record, putting it on his TT and carefully lowering the tonearm, etc, all for a few minutes of music. Maybe the transformation is part of the aging process.

Time and technology march on. Who's got the time and energy to care for tube gear anymore?

My take is that if you pay enough attention to the amp/speakers and have components in the signal path that aren't egregiously noisy, it's hard for most people to tell the difference. Caving in to the room correction aspect was a slow process. I'd been "sold" on it long ago with a friend's TaCT gear, but it was always just outside of my budgetary threshold of pain. The improvements were obvious, even to the most casual listener. However, until recently, I hadn't heard another system that was able to accomplish that. In the last year or so, I started fiddling with Audyssey MultEQ XT after winning a Denon AVR as an office door prize. It just plain worked. Then, after some discussion here, I auditioned an AVR with MultEQ XT32. It also just plain worked. Color me a convert to room correction. It's now affordable enough that I don't think I'd ever buy an AVR/Processor without it.

Like I said, I'll be curious to see how well it sells, even if it isn't something that I would personally buy. (Lots of people buy iPhones and I don't like 'em)

Best,

Ritz, those are very interesting news coming from you. Thank you for sharing those experiences. A lot of folks around here were wondering how much of a difference XT32 made.

BTW, I've been reading various stories by disgruntled TacT gear owners on the Tact Audio newsgroups on Yahoo in the last few months. Same thing from a very well known Tact gear modder and repair shop that can't get Tact replacement parts such as Tact I/O boards and PCBs. Some folks haven't been able to get their gear back from repairs for months now. Their attempts at contacting Tact Audio have proven fruitless and apparently their phone service and e-mail accounts are no longer in service. A very credible and long time Tact gear owner reports that their website is currently infected by a Trojan virus. Another Tact gear owner has been advised by a third party that Tact is in a status of financial crises. On some websites, I've read that Boz (Dr. Radomir Bozovic), the owner of Tact Audio, is quite busy porting the Tact Digital Room Correction system to the new Emotiva XMC-1 processor. There are even rumors flying around that Tact Audio may be acquired by Emotiva (Jade Design Inc.).

On the Emotiva forum, it came to light that their website was not working, nor their phone number. When I went to the TacT website and got hit with a trojan(rejected, thankfully), I challenged posters on what this might mean. After persisting, I got several of my posts deleted!

It seems to me that Big Dan is some kind of predatory business guy. He scoops up Sherbourn, which seemed to be in deep decline, and no businessman in his right mind would enter a business relationship with a company in trouble like TacT. So obviously there is something to be gained for Dan to do this, and I would wager it is some kind of ownership/purchase of TacT for next to nothing so he can ship more jobs to China.

If/when TacT gets released for the XMC(early 2013), I wouldn't be surprised to hear an announcement later in the year. Now this is all speculation on my part, but since Dan has made no friends in the Audiophile industry by dumping cheap chinese products in the marketplace, the only way he can get any decent room correction componentry is to take over floundering companies IMHO.

I don't know anything about the current status of TacT. That's too bad if they've fallen on hard times as I was always pleasantly surprised by the effectiveness of their room correction.

As for Emotiva and shipping jobs to China, I hear ya. I've been looking at the higher end Onkyo AVR's that are made in Malaysia as part of my often fruitless effort to avoid products manufactured in China. I'm not sure if I'd call Emo's pricing strategy "dumping". If they can build and sell their products and make a profit, more power to 'em. Ultimately, competition benefits the consumer.

Best,

Politics in the Malaysia are somewhat different than those in China, to be sure, but if the goal is jobs for AMERICAN workers, buying an Onkyo doesn't exactly help. At least all of the Outlaw multi-channel amplifiers are made in the US.

When it comes to the lesser of two evils, I'd rather support Malaysia or several other countries in the region than China, who actively engages in stealing technologies, military weaponry and hacking foreign corporations/government agencies.

See, it took a while, but we finally found something we agree on.

Best,