Outlaw Audio Model 990
Outlaw Audio works sells strickly over the internet. You know what that means - they pass the saving on to you! Yup, you’ve heard it many times before. Direct = better. With Outlaw Audio, however, they really seem to deliver.
Take (or buy!), for example, the Outlaw Audio Model 990 pre/pro. It’s got 7.1 channels of sounds. DVI switching. Flexible crossover control and lip-sync delay. A bevy of surround sound formats including Dolby ProLogic IIx. It upsamples audio up to 92KHZ/24bit audio resolution. It has 5 optical and 2 coaxial digital inputs. Uh… wait a sec. I could use more than just two coaxial inputs. Ah, well, I guess no product is perfect.
But this product comes very close for the very reasonable price of $1099.
Outlaw Audio Model 990 7.1 Channel Preamp/Surround Sound Processor
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May 25th, 2006 at 10:14 am
It looks like connector constraints have finally become the dominant factor in pre/pro mechanical design! That box could be about 1/3 the height (like my Myryad) and still accommodate the front panel interface and internal electronics. (There won’t be any heavy-duty transformers or huge heatsinks in there, it’s a pre/pro.) But then there wouldn’t be room for all the back panel connectors…
(The Myryad doesn’t have balanced audio outputs, which take up about 1/3 of the back panel on the Outlaw. That’s kind of a shame, because my Bryston power amp supports balanced inputs. But balanced outputs are not that common even in mid-to-high-end pre/pros, and apparently they’re expensive to do right - the Lexicon MC-12 has a balanced version that costs about $2000 more than the unbalanced one. This may be because a properly (”true”) balanced signal path requires twice as many electronics as an unbalanced path.)