First Impressions of the Random Kind
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- The unit shipped double-boxed, but it had definitely been opened and re-taped. Some of the packing tape had come off. No big deal, since it was only in transit overnight, but the Outlaws might want to have their shipping department do a better job taping.

- The unit has an ungrounded detachable power cord. I was surprised (in a positive way), as I thought it was grounded and I'd have more ground loop issues to sort through.

- The jacks on the rear of the unit are gold plated. The photos had led me to believe they were nickel plated. As others have noted, the jacks are just a hair too close - the Outlaw cables slightly touch when you plug a L-R pair of them in. I didn't feel like I was stressing them too much when plugging them in, though.

- The unit weighs in decently. It is far more attractive than I thought it would be, and feels like a nice piece of gear. The rubber volume knob is slightly cheesy looking, but it feels nice when using it. The buttons stick out further from the face of the panel than I expected them to, but this is fine too. The 950 is a handsome unit, even with the green button and wacky logo.

- As someone else pointed out, they supply Duracell Ultra batteries with the remote. This is a plus. The remote itself leaves something to be desired in a few ways, but it's pretty good for a pack-in remote. First of all, it's awkward in the hand. The batteries are towards the front of the remote, making it feel like it's continually going to tip forward out of my hand. Oddly enough, it feels comfortable to me holding it upside down. Secondly, the learning feature is nowhere near 100% reliable. It took several tries to get it to learn some keys on my Audiotron remote. Once they "took," though, they worked fine. (EDIT: Gonk suggests placing both remotes on a flat surface first, and making sure you don't move either remote. I also found that holding down keys on your original remote until the 950's remote blinks green worked better than simply tapping the keys on your original remote.) Lastly, the remote stacks up play/pause/ff/rew on top of the standard menu navigation arrows. This is seriously irritating, but I'm sure I'll figure out a workaround. (EDIT: One problem I thought the remote had was lack of a volume/mute punch-through feature, but RAF and Gonk both set me straight - see pg. 39 of the manual).

- The OSD menu system is really easy to use. Navigation is a snap; drilling in and out of the menus is quite easy. However, I really find it disappointing that there is no option to completely turn off the OSD for showing volume/acquired signals, etc. The best you can do is turn it down to 3 seconds.

- The main trigger output works great. It triggers my DIY triggerable power strip properly. Not much to report here.



[This message has been edited by Prefect (edited May 03, 2002).]