I must admit after all the speculation about the three previous Outlaw pre/pros that never came to be I am skeptical of getting into a discussion of what the 975 will offer. However, I recently stepped back to look at what my needs are and I may be OK with a stripped down (by today's standards) pre/pro. I don't think I need video processing; my Pioneer plasma does a pretty nice job with cable signals and my Oppo has ABT processing in it. Room correction; it would be nice but I'm not displeased with my current room configuration and the sound from my 990. Lastly, I want to use HDMI for all my sources (cable box, Oppo Blu-Ray, Apple TV, X-Box, etc). Add some nice DAC/ADCs to the equation and the latest decoding and it may be all I really need. Only one extra would be nice, but not entirely necessary, is a good MM/MC phone preamp for those of us with a vinyl addiction. Outlaw could leave off all but one S and component video, use unbalanced channel outputs (most don't have noisy electrical environments that require balanced), maybe only have one component video input and one output, and call it a day. We'll just have to see what they are beta testing......
Once you've had a good room correction system in place, it ceases to be a "nice to have" and moves firmly into the "must have" category. I used to be a doubter myself. There's no way I'd ever purchase an AVR or processor without what I considered to be the best room correction system within my budget. It makes a very noticeable difference. Even the lower end MultEQ XT does a pretty good job in my relatively odd shaped listening room now and I've since auditioned XT32 and agree that it's a definite improvement over XT. For me, the next processor is either going to be equipped with Audyssey XT32 or (less likely) the Emotiva TaCT-based solution (if that survives user scrutiny after being in the market for a while). Time will tell.
Best,
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