The ‘who’ is going leave a bad taste in many mouths, not just because of what they did, but their timing. Yes, it would be normal for a competitor to insist that a non-compete agreement be kept, if, in their view, the distribution method means little. The average B&M store consumer is going to know nothing about the Outlaw 978 situation, so bad feelings among a relative few against the ‘other company’ won't amount to a flea on a camel when it comes to ‘other company’ sales.

What is suspiciously nefarious is that Outlaw’s product has been in development, known both ‘in the industry’ and publicly, for quite some time. Why not speak up sooner ... much, much sooner ... unless your aim was to allow Outlaw to use up time and resources first, not just to enforce a non-compete clause. The only way I see this as not being a ‘bleed Outlaw’ action is if the ‘other company’ had somewhat recently signed a contract with the Chinese developer, long after Outlaw, then flexed muscle – the Chinese company choosing profit (or the promise of it) over principle. If the ‘other company’ did indeed sign a contract with the Chinese company in order to get at Outlaw, at first saying ‘no problem’ to the Chinese company regarding the Outlaw product development, then later saying ‘yes, there is a problem’, this would be an indication that this latest part of the scenario was indeed corporate warfare. Who knows, once the 978 is laid to rest, the Chinese company may see the ‘other company’ say ‘thanks, but our project is now dead’ as well.

Best analysis to date. But we're all just speculating at this point.

It hasn't been mentioned, but I presume the 998 is now also dead? Remember, the 978 was based on the 998's chassis.

If so, that's the THIRD sucessive prepro Outlaw has cancelled.

I don't believe that Outlaw formally announced any firm plan for a product to be more advanced / robust than the 978, only a desire to, at some future point, attempt to have some product that had some of the advanded features that may have been percieved as more esoteric than those of the 978.

I suspect that the recent disappointment AND THE FACT that the previously covert development of the "lil' alternative" to the 978 has been made public will invite speculation as to what goes into the "new" flagship.

A "wish list" for such things will probably be a fun new topic...

Actually, I believe the 998 was annouced first and the 978 came second because of continued Trinnov problems.

That is correct. The Model 998 was to be the successor to the Model 997 that was mentioned in Outlaw's letter today. Like the Model 997/Sherwood 972, the Model 998 was to employ Trinnov. Implementing Trinnov was going to take forever, so they decided to take the hardware they'd been developing and release a version of it with Audyssey (initially MultEQ XT, later MultEQ XT32) and then later try to untangle Trinnov if possible. The Model 998/978 would both have the same basic hardware, I believe, although it was somewhat dependent on how things worked out with Trinnov.

It seems like the problems with the R972 (and by extension, the 998) were not with Trinnov, but with other aspects of the hardware stack. Trinnov is applied post-decoding.

Have I mis-interpreted things?

Best.

Without having been involved with the testing its pretty difficult to know for sure, but it took SN a number of releases to get the R972 functioning correctly and based upon comments and reviews it appears to have still had some issues. One can easily envision a scenario where more memory was required for the Trinnov processing and that in a hardware design with a fixed, unexpandable amount of memory, this lead to design trade-offs that impacted other parts of the stack. Optimizing and rewriting code to free up memory(perhaps at the assembler level) is never easy and requires really talented coders.

I think ritz is right - while Trinnov may have needed some tweaking, there were other issues that appeared to have nothing to do with room correction. It sounded to me like Outlaw was fairly pleased with Trinnov. I think there were other problems that drove Outlaw's decision

So back to "Who Did It?"...we have an eyewitness account (technically hearsay...but work with me here) that the perp is "headquartered in NA", they obviously build stuff with this partner in China / had the opportunity to commit this crime, and they must have motive - presumably they have some claim to be an Outlaw competitor (channel aside it seems/perhaps). There has been some talk of does "so and so have enough clout" (i.e. do they have they "means" to commit the crime), but it doesn't take much clout in a "us or them" shakedown...just more clout than "them". To summarize ideas in this and other posts, it seems the only suspects that meet or might meet all three of the must-have requirements are:

NAD, Anthem, Parasound, and ATI/B&K

....right? In a lineup I think that is order of most-likely to least-likely.

ATI seems least likely for lots of reasons (do they even build anything in China?)...although a move like that would certainly account for Mr. Tribeman being caught completely by surprise.

Parasound seems unlikely...and do they build anything in China?

Re Anthem, the 978 would arguably be a competitor to the MRX recievers...and maybe to the AVM50v (which while much more expensive is at least available...forcing some folks waiting for the 978 to hide a few K from their wives / take more aggressive steps...and while the 50v itself is not made in China it doesn't mean that Anthem couldn't use MRX-building clout to keep out another competitor to the MRX line and the AVM50v in one shot). It also seems likely that Anthem would use a similar partner as Outlaw...their build-stuff presence in Asia is relatively small I would think and they might be drawn to the same type of partner.

Until we learn more, NAD seems the best match according to our information and consideration of opportunity, means, and motive. Their processor(s) have generally been in-line with the 978 in price (at least at the lower end / 1-model-back). They sell B&M (and would generally be referred as such a company), and in addition to that they are also easily and increasingly available online - increasing their motive in stopping the 978. The fact that they don't have MX32 yet is a HUGE reason to block the 978...NAD processor sales would go to zero online when the 978 comes out, and it would probably impact their B&M too. Plus it seems NAD has been increasingly "sophisticated" lately in developing their business - they and their parent are expanding their channels, offerings, and visibility....keep Outlaw out of the ring and the NAD/PSB combination is better positioned to battle Anthem/Paradigm, D&M, etc.

I have my own theory based upon a google of D&M Holdings Bain Capital. D&M is "a Bain Capital portfolio company". Bain is headquartered in Boston.

What popped up was the a link to a job posting on July 11 2012 on CareerBuilders.com for a Regional Sales Manager position at D&M which stated "We are currently seeking a Regional Sales Manager to direct efforts to achieve sales goals for our Denon, Marantz & Boston Acoustics brands in our Direct to Consumer business. This positional will frequently consolidate support functions for the region to provide efficiencies of scale."

Seems like plenty of motive to me for a traditional B&M company headquartered in North America. A shipping 978 could directly threaten AV7xxx and AV8xxx sales.