Well, Will, I don't want you coming over to Westwood and beating the crap out of me.

Seriously, my "red dot" 950 is quieter than my original unit. More important, though, is that I think it's a friendlier music-only unit. The original 950 was a bit peaky in the high mid-range and up. This produced incredible presence but also produced some edginess.

One thing that I continue to observe with my Outlaw 950/Aragon amp combo is that I have never had a system that sounds SO MUCH different depending on what power filtering I have engaged. I have really been able to fine-tune the sound, even with my relatively simple Isobar strips.

I've also found the 950 susceptible to 60Hz hum and have moved plugs and filters around to deal with that (even though my previous H/K preamp in the exact same setup showed NO ground loop hum.)

In a few cases, my guess is that some folks may actually be experiencing low level ground loops in their systems and describing them as "hiss." But that's only a guess.

Still it's a great unit and clean enough that even subtle and fussy tweaking can yield very audible results. I guess that's one of the reasons my wife has started calling me the "Adrian Monk of Home Theater."


[This message has been edited by bobliinds (edited September 22, 2002).]