Just when they were becoming available at retailers and I wanted a good somewhat "future proof" Pre-Pro, I decided to "bite the bullet" and purchase the Yamaha CX-A5000 and I am certainly glad I did. I have always been kind of a Yamaha fan anyway but after years of rumours and cajoling, they finally brought out a unit along with(if someone is so inclined)a 11 channel amp. I already had my Outlaw amps in place so I only needed the processor. I think you will find that the street price on the unit is several hundred dollars less than the MSRP so that shouldn't be an issue. The ultimate 11.2 potential outputs(both bal. and unbal.) are mind bongling, however, I use it in a 9.2 configuration and it works wonderfully and, by the way, solidly built and weighs 30 pounds, a lot even for a Pre-Pro.

I looked at the Marantz 8801 myself, however, the price really couldn't be justified especially compared to the Yamaha. With its top quality DACs, along with many other features, the press, so far, has been raving about it and although biased, I couldn't agree more in their assessment. This is something I won't be replacing for the foreseeable future.

The only negative is, that in North America you can get any colour you want, "as long as it is black". In some other parts of the world, in addition to the black, Yamaha offers this unit in optional silver and champagne colours which I would have really preferred much like they used to have with their separates back in the eighties and nineties and their last "flagship" AVR offered in the optional champagne , the RXV1 which I still have sitting on one of my racks in another room.

The folks from Crestron seem to have a hatched a RECEIVER to feed the hungry maw of custom installers that can foist anything on their naive clients -- http://www.electronichouse.com/product/details/hd-xspa/

$5500 MSRP

Ooooooooooookie Dokey!

I'm not surprised by that - they probably needed this platform or something similar for commercial installations, and it wouldn't be hard to do a version that they could offer for consumer/residential clients. I was just looking at some Crestron cutsheets a couple weeks ago, trying to figure out heat gain for a storage closet in a new hotel that was being changed into an AV equipment closet, and they seemed to have a pretty extensive assortment of HDMI-related offerings. I bet it would be convenient for a custom installer to use one of these if he's doing a full Crestron control setup for a big home theater installation. Personally, I'll pass...

Looking at the back panel of the Crestron receiver, it's obvious that its feature set is more geared towards custom installation and home automation. I mean, look even at the speaker connectors. This isn't for consumers



It's like seeing the price of a riding mower made for golf courses and saying 'whoa, too expensive for my front lawn'. Well, it wasn't made for residential lawns.

Did yo post links to the OLDER model. HD-XSP http://www.crestron.com/resources/produc...166&id=2424 That said it is not really all that different --

This newer unit is still targeted at custom installers, but includes features are more consumer oriented like 4K video pass thru and two-channel downmix... "The Crestron® HD-XSPA makes it easy to put great surround sound in any room of the house"

The thing too is that if anybody follows the other AV products Crestron continues to support it is pretty clear that products like their PROCISE PSPHD processor were targeted very much at consumers that would have also considered products like Outlaw's still born prepro -- The saddest part is that the capabilities of even the now four / five year old http://www.electronichouse.com/article/sneak_peek_crestron_73_procise_surround_processor/ $11K MSRP pre-pro are now eclipsed by far more affordable units... The PSPHD also incorporated things like more standard XLR connectors and Audyssey technologies including MultEQ® XT...

I really don't see the comparison to "professional lawn maintenance equipment". Firms like Onkyo continue to market their Integra line through custom installation specialists for use in homes.

It is not like the Crestron products are really designed for commercial sound reinforcement or the kind of applications
that churches and similar "gathering" spaces might utilize -- http://www.roland.com/professional/products_video.html

Riding mowers made for golf course sized lawns are sold to professionals, just as the Crestron receiver is "still targeted at custom installers". I really don't see the point of comparing pro gear to consumer gear, unless you're looking for an easy opportunity to feign sticker shock at what "naive clients" are willing to buy.

There is nothing to feign about when it comes to this gear. Crestron's new product is at a price point that cannot be justified by its feature set or performance. While I cannot disagree that Crestron products are largely designed to answer the needs of custom installers the fact is that the features of the newly introduced product are not competitive with offerings from other firms that also incorporate features for whole house audio / boardroom presentation type installations.

In addition to the aforementioned products from Integra that come with features like HDBaseT for sending AV signals and control info over standard ethernet cables -- http://www.soundandvision.com/content/integra-dhc-605-network-av-controller at an MSRP of $2000 there are also products from the ES division of Sony that have on-board Control4 integration at a similar price -- http://www.in-homeautomation.com/store/sony-str-da5800es-with-full-control4-automation.html

This is not "pro gear" in anything other than price and one would have to be extremely naive to not understand that products marketed in a way that encourages deceptive practices are a bad direction for the overall industry. Even when it comes to ultra-pricey gear from specialty firms it would be hard to argue such things are not intended for use in "normal" homes -- http://www.thetadigital.co/casablanca_iv_controller_info.shtml though at least firms like ATI/Theta are a bit more honest in targeting their appeal / value to the wise but still "luxury" buyer. To play with the analogy of lawncare it is clear that some firms really do have the oomph to deliver superior results while other firms are marketing products with similar price tags but lacking in performance --

http://www.scag.com/lawnstriping.html vs http://www.mowersdirect.com/Craftsman-37488-Lawn-Mower/p11073.html

You're stating your subjective opinion as an objective fact. Of course the price point can be justified, just not to you. But custom installers I've spoken to would prefer this solution compared to buying an audio/video receiver and a Crestron processor, since it takes up less space and costs less. It is pro gear, since this receiver is typically installed by custom installers (not consumers) and its automation is programmed by Crestron programmers (not consumers).

Sanjay is right that Crestron is pro gear - I walked across the discarded boxes from dozens of small Crestron components (I expect mostly wall jacks, control modules, and the like) yesterday morning while at a jobsite. Pro feature set requirements will always differ from the consumer requirements, with fewer "bells and whistles" and more control functionality. The level of support available to installers, scale of that control capability, and internal build quality (needed to allow such gear to stay in place and working for a very long time) go a long way toward justifying the high price compared to an Onkyo or Sony product that costs far less and has a lot of extra features that a hotel ballroom/conference center or office board room have no use for.

I agree with sanjays's response about the "packaging efficiency" because I do agree that is a "plus" of the Crestron rxvr, in some jobs that might even be reason enough to go with the product, though I don't doubt that given the 975's compact dimensions a similar diminutive unit ought not be to hard to engineer with off the shelf class D power...

That said seems gonk is venturing into the "subjective" with rest of their comments?

I might concede a point on "level of support" but the custom installation folks I talk to generally tell me that increasingly it is not Crestron that sets the bar for making the task of creating a well integrated system achievable but firms like Control4.

Similarly the feedback from not just custom installers but folks who've bought stuff from "grey" channels does not support the myth that products with esoteric labels on 'em are somehow of a greater 'longevity' than high quality gear from well known sources.

I would even suggest that it is largely impossible to say that these sorts of products really deliver any greater "control functionality" than more feature rich products from firms that do respond to the feedback of a wide range of dealers, custom installers and 'regular' customers -- the fact is Integra and Sony-ES are NOT just "labels" but represent an sub-speciality of their parent firms that are in many ways more responsive than the more 'mainstream' companies overall AV organization, they have more resources available to quickly tailor the offerings of each product in their line-up than firms that are much smaller.


Finally I have been part of enough "build outs" of my own home, offices that I have worked in and even community type organizations that the "legacy" of architects and designers spec'ing not what is REALLY best suited for a particular job but what is most easily obtained often does mean that wide availability "wins out" over "best in breed" UNLESS someone is especially educated / passionate about not going with the herd. This is not "subjective" it is what I have seen OVER AND OVER in not just the little odds and ends of connectors or routine things like plumbing fixtures and such but even MASSIVELY costly things like UPS/DBG, FSSs, CRACs & PDU/RPPs for huge data projects.

I certainly agree that firms like Crestron do everything they can to crowd-out true innovation and discourage competition from their entrenched markets in ways that make the anti-competitive practices of firms in the consumer space that have hindered Outlaw's progress toward new pre-pros seem positively tame by comparison. I know our good hosts here avoid using the forum to besmirch their competitors as much as possible but one might wonder if the Outlaw's have not been harassed by companies that do recognize their value priced products do threaten the high margins they can command from folks that are increasingly capable of doing a little comparison shopping...