Hey, today's $500.00 receiver probably outperforms a $1500.00 unit of a few years ago!!!

There is a downward threshold to anything built for a certain price point, below which overall quality and reliability suffers. The quality of the switches, jacks, and controls for instance. Also, a really cheap receiver cannot afford to put as powerful a DSP chip into its design, therefore the processing is compromised by having to make do with less processing power. Just listen to the "boingy-chruch" reverb settings that some receivers have. They are trying to make shortcuts in the processing power devoted to what is a rather complicated process. Same thing with computer program plug-ins for DSP for your soundcard (or my digital workstation) Some processes take 2 or 3 DSP chips to get the reverb or other effects right. The Outlaw 950 probably is pretty close to that "sweet spot" where the quality of the components is good enough, yet there is little "fat" wasted on cosmetics. Also, notice they don't even attempt to do "room simulations" which cuts DSP overhead (and are pretty useless IMHO) and would probably sound pretty crappy anyway in a unit costing under $1000.00.

I'm sure you know all this already...



[This message has been edited by soundhound (edited August 28, 2002).]