If you really believed that, why not buy a $500 receiver and use that as a pre/pro?

If you say that there's no or not much difference between the Outlaw at $950 and pre/pros costing more than $1500. Why would there be any more difference in a receiver at $500? You could save a lot of money that way.

Plus, due to economies of scale, a receiver at $500 actually might have *more* engineering hours put into its design. (I.e., they sell a lot more of them, so the R&D overhead per unit is a lot less. Plus the many common components that would be in units just below or just above that particular unit in a company's product line.)