Sherwood is the local brand for a Korean company that developed the R-972 receiver which Outlaw was planning to use as the platform for the Model 997. Sherwood's parent company is no longer in the picture because the R-972 failed to meet Outlaw's requirements. The Model 978 was developed from the ground up in conjunction with a completely different manufacturing partner. A receiver version of the Model 978 would not have any relationship to the R-972, just as the Model 978 will have no relationship to the Model 997.

I don't think a receiver version of the Model 978 is likely to be practical, both considering the products they would be competing with and because they can simply bundle a Model 978 with a Model 7075 and achieve the same thing. That's just me, though, and I've been wrong before...


The 5-9 person count seems reasonable from what I've experienced when communicating with Outlaw. They have some staff that are involved in product development (such as Peter and Scott), although I doubt there's anyone who focuses solely on that, and they have some staff that are involved in sales and tech support and other business functions. Their design work is not all done in-house, because (as you noted) they can't support the payroll costs of having teams of engineers and software developers on staff for designing power amps, analog audio boards, digital audio boards, video processing boards, power supplies, and firmware when they develop such a wide range of products and keep them in production for such long life cycles. Good power amp designers would not necessarily be of any use on a surround processor or speaker design.

Outlaw's annual expenses will be purchasing (buying products from their manufacturing partners), R&D (paying designers or manufacturing partners for help in implementing new designs or updating existing designs), and then other things like payroll, rent, web hosting services, and advertising.