Hey Nigel - I was bound by a non-disclosure agreement until Peter called me last night. He said that Robert Fowkes over in the Home Theater Forum was going to be the first to post something, and after that I was free to give my impressions.

I think tester #4 just received a unit Sunday or Monday of this week, so I wouldn't expect anything from him/her just yet.


GENERAL COMMENTS

- no switched outlets
My AudioSource amps have an auto-on/off function, but no 12v triggers. I found that if the volume is too low, the amps shut themselves off. Oh well. I guess that's what they're supposed to do.

I don't want to leave them on all the time, so I'm going to have to get a switched power strip.

- pseudo analog test
My Sony DVP-S7700 DVD player has both analog and digital (coaxial) outputs. I connected both to the 950 for testing. I told the 950 that DVD input was on Coaxial 1, and that CD input was Analog. Then I used the remote to switch back and forth. Neither my wife nor I could hear any difference between these.

I'll have to buy a phono preamp so I can test a real analog signal. I haven't listened to a record in at least five years, so it wasn't a priority to me.

- display readability
I like the two-line display. It is easily readable from 10' across the room. I miss the LED on the volume control like my Yamaha had, but I understand the advantage of this type. The volume control is linear, so it's easy to set any exact volume level you want. With my Yamaha, I could only use part of the dial - from 7:00 up to 11:00 or so.

I think everything in the on-screen display is mirrored on the front panel. That's important if you don't want the 950 to do any video switching for you.

The display can be dimmed by 50%, which looks better to me, even in daylight.

- documentation
I'm a tech writer, so unlike most people I like to RTFM before installing something. But obviously I was able to set up the system without a manual.

Because Peter had told me I wouldn't get a manual, I printed the one from the 1050, thinking it would help if I got into trouble. I forgot that I had it, and never used it.

I found a few things that I thought were bugs, but that turned out to be features. I suggested that these would be good to mention in the manual.

- logo/button
Didn't Ben Franklin say, "in the dark, all audio components are grey?" The logo isn't as big as I thought it would be. I really got so involved with the awesome performance of the unit that the logo (and the whole equipment rack) became invisible.

And here's something - my beta unit actually has a BLACK button! (I wonder if I could swap it when I get my production unit??)

- noise level
Initially, I had a problem with hum, but it went away when I put cheater plugs on the AudionSource amps to bypass the ground connection. Two plugs at 99 cents from the local hardware store and the hum totally disappeared.

I'll do a test tonight for crosstalk and will report back tomorrow...


- headphone
As we saw in the alpha pictures, there's no headphone jack. The wife and I both have Sennheiser HD-580's that we use at work, so we are fond of good headphone sound. But why bother in the home theater room when we have the full speaker setup?

I think that people going with separates are expected to buy a separate headphone amp. Even the lo-fi cordless headphones we gave my father a few years ago need line-level outputs.

There's no Dolby Headphone processing.

- DSPs and tone controls

Last year, I voted to keep the the DSPs. I used to use the Jazz Club setting on my Yamaha once in a while. Oh well.

You can adjust the Bass and Treble by... rats, forgot to write it down... something like +/- 6 dB.

There's no balance control, but you can raise or lower each speaker's relative volume.

- naming inputs and associating surround modes with them
In college, I had a JVC receiver that called the CD input "DAD," for Digital Audio Disk. On my Yamaha, I had to connect the DVD player to "Tape2/VCR 2." On my Mitsubishi TV, the cable signal displays on the screen as "Antenna A." And, before I got an external amp (connected to "Tape 1 Out"), when we listened to anything in Zone 2 we had to remember to turn off the surround modes, because there was no center channel. This all lead to low SAF when I had to explain multiple mappings and steps to watch a movie.

With the 950, I want to select "DVD" and have it automatically use the proper surround mode. Yes! It works. Each input can have a different processing applied to it, and this is remembered when you turn the unit off.

What can't it do? I can't rename the inputs. So I can't change Video 1 to Game, Video 2 to Baby Monitor, etc.

- video quality
Unfortunately, my beta unit had a problem with the S-Video output. I considered this my first big find during beta, only to find out that manufacturing had already discovered the hardware problem and corrected it, but hadn't told Outlaw yet. Scott couldn't reproduce the problem, so obviously it has been fixed in later units.

- bass management
The 950 offers a hard-set analog bass management option for folks using the 5.1 analog inputs. I don't have DVD-A or SACD, so I couldn't test this yet. 80 Hz seems like a good compromise point, although it wouldn't be ideal for me.

I *really* like the triple crossover! My surround speakers are rated down to 48Hz, which was overkill for Dolby Pro Logic with its limited bandwidth of 100Hz- 7kHz. Now I have set a crossover for them at 60 Hz. I also used this feature to set my center to 80 Hz, and my mains to 40 Hz.The sub obviously gets everything below those crossover points.

An interesting feature (that I initially thought was a bug) is that if you set your speaker to "large", you can still set a crossover. In this case, the bass below the crossover point is still sent to the sub, but it isn't removed from the primary speaker.

You can also turn the sub off if you have all large, full-range speakers. If you do that, I don't know if it re-integrates the .1 signal back into the speakers...? Someone else will have to test that, or we have to wait for the manual. My big Snells go pretty low (rated for 34dB), but not down into sub territory.

The triple crossover works amazingly well. Each channel now seems more complete than ever before. Running through the test sweeps on the Avia disk really shows how seamless the crossover is. Wow! This feature sold me on the product.

- future proof?
Compared to the price of upgrades on some processors, you could buy this, wait a couple of years, then buy the high-end Outlaw processor and give this one away. I think you'd still end up ahead.

With the 950 in place, the processor is no longer the weakest link in my system. Looking at my own upgrade path, I want the Bryston 6B-ST I've been pining for, then a satellite dish to replace our lousy cable service, and then a new HDTV. After that, I'll need a DVD player with progressive-scan output and either SACD or DVD-A. The 950 can handle any of those upgrades. I was glad to read in the forum that the 950's component switching could handle HDTV signals.

Downloadable upgrades would have been nice, but they did say they could put out fixes on a new eprom. That's better than what I have now!

The 950 is future-proof if the future is defined as only 5-10 years away.

- SAF

My wife and I were friends for almost a year before we started dating. One of the first things we did as friends was to go shopping for some real speakers to replace her college setup. She ended up with Definitive Technology BP8's, which she later upgraded to BP10's, and then to the BP30's we have now. She loves that bipolar sound where I prefer my more precise Snells. The point is, she's got good ears, but they are different than
mine.

Her take on this new piece is that of course the new surround modes are great. But listening to straight stereo, she hasn't really listened enough to notice much difference. Because of the nest of wires, it's difficult to compare the old and new setups since I couldn't immediately switch back and forth. The old setup sounded great, and the new one still sounds great. Continued listening will probably improve her impressions as we notice new things in our favorite songs.

One very important thing about getting the 950 is that we can finally move the Yamaha upstairs to replace a Sony receiver that died a year ago. The upstairs "zone 3," where the BP30's are, has been music-less for a year. Being able to do this will improve our overall enjoyment level more than getting DD and DTS down in the home theater.

more later...