LCSeminole: As a leading moderator of the Emotiva Lounge, the contents of your post are not surprising, other than that you are posting them in "our" Saloon. We hope in the future, Emotiva welcomes our posts in "their" Lounge.

As virtually all companies in our market do, (including Emotiva using ODMs Tonewinner and Jade), we use external ODM firms that present us with footprints of a basic design. While the starting point and the "outside" of a product may resemble something that was offered to others, the "insides" are designed and tested by us.

You asked about the similarity of the forthcoming Model 976 to an old OEM prototype. Here are just a few differences:
• The video board, the critical component of any processor, is 100% ours. It was designed by Outlaw. A look at the pictures of both units confirms this. It is our design, and ours, alone; including HDMI 2.0b capability
• The audio board is also an Outlaw design. It uses DACs and an output architecture that is quite different from any OEM product and other similarly priced products. It is ours, and ours alone.
• The main board architecture and internal software code was also designed Outlaw to accommodate the special requirements of the HDMI 2.0b inputs on the video board. A quick check of the date and Outlaw identification in the pictures show that clearly is the case.
• The user interface, including the PEQ system choices, was also created by Outlaw.
• Other special Outlaw only features are right there to see: take a close look at our rear panel and these differences will be obvious.

Most importantly, the Model 976 has undergone extensive testing and certification to assure that it works exactly as it should right out of the box. Proper pre-launch beta testing is a vital product development step some other companies leave to their customers to do after purchase.

Along with our internal software and hardware evaluations, industry veterans assisted us with the beta testing so that we could catch and then squash all the bugs. We then performed extensive regression testing to make sure that what may have fixed one bug did not cause another. You can only do this kind of testing when the final product is your own design. We firmly believe that our customers should not Beta testers.

We trust that this answers the questions you have raised. That’s all well and good, but here’s the bottom line: What is important is where a product ends up--not where it started. When the Model 976 begins shipping later this spring we invite everyone to order one for themselves and compare it to what they are using now, or may have been considering as an alternate purchase.

The final proof is in the listening and viewing. We are confident that the Model 976 will be the best product in its class.