I have used Crestron products in the past and they tend to be rather complex but well built.

This latest offering is no doubt an answer to the "void" left by the absence of suitable products from ATI (a long time partner of the Outlaws...), the neglect of pre-pros from Lexicon under the bewildering lack of leadership that Harmon International has exhibited of late, and yes, the collapse of Outlaw's efforts in this arena...

http://www.audioholics.com/av-preamp-processor-reviews/crestron-psphd-procise-fl

In all honesty the mix of what this product offers vs what is "leaves off" is extremely interesting. Offering just 7.1 when MANY pre-pros offer a much more up-to-date range of decoding options is not too hard to explain in the "hard core" world of the custom installer but it would seem that MANY folks with the bucks for a truly tricked out home theater would gladly accept additional height / width speakers and associated amplification.

There are an array of audio inputs that truly boggle -- 8 analog stereo pairs, 4 TOSLINK optical digital inputs, 6 Coaxial digital inputs, and a RCA inputs for 8 channels of analog multi-channel audio.

6 HDMI inputs give a whole lot of options for sources too.

BUT WHAT THE HECK IS GOING THROUGH THEIR HEADS with just ONE HDMI output? Especially as nearly every Crestron install I have ever seen has far more zones than typical homes or offices this is going to require MULTIPLE Crestron integration devices which is going to just make this in an insanely hard to justify expense...

Speaking of expense this thing is "list priced" so far out into "laugh at the lack of honesty" that it should come with a canister of nitrous oxide -- $11,000 crosses the line into the territory of manufacturers solidly beyond "golden eared audiophile" and into the "you should see my mansion in Dubai" territory.

Other bizarre beyond words decisions -- expensive, fragile, power sucking and potentially electrically noisy VFDs for a product likely to be rack mounted in a dark closet for 90% of all buyers, no OSD at all, only HDMI and DVI video outputs with no provision for 4K, Audyssey MultEQ XT without the more precise 32 bit option ...

The "technical application diagrams" suggest they see this having a lot of appeal to dumbkoff teleconference buyers that are gonna use this instead of / alongside of gear from firms like Cisco or Tandberg, so who knows what sorts of decisions they made for sound / image quality...


Methinks with experience of failed project(s) Outlaw could build something that destroys this thing for well under a third of the price... If there was an effort to build a smart sales force selling this thing into the targets Creston has identified as well as perhaps re-teaming with the multi-display guys from ATI (whose gear I still see at so many sports bars...) would an extremely lucrative way to target an apparently under-served market.

Also the matching BEAST of a 400 watt /Channel x 7 (at a mind numbing $8K...) is clearly Made in the USA but I see no such proclamation that the pre-pro is...

That seems a wee bit overpriced for what they're offering. Egads!