Outlaw Audio 990 Pre a good start?

JoshParsons84

It's Christmas time!!! I'm wanting to start my HT experience all over and start with a new face. I wanna get my Pre/Pro and amp first as I've already got speakers. I didn't say I had "good" speakers, but I've already got some LOL Anywho....Would the Outlaw 990 for a Pre be a good start or an Emotiva DMC-1? And I was looking for an amp but Outlaw wants $3,500 for a 7-channel and I don't wanna dish that out quite yet. So any suggestions on a good 7-channel amp? What about an Emotiva MPS-1? I'd love to have a Sunfire TGA 7400 but there's no telling how much that'll be. But maybe in the future we'll so hopefully. Not sure what speakers yet I'm gonna run on this but I know I have to have hi-end electronics to make anything sound good.

Also when buying speakers should I base the whole system off of the center channel? What I mean is find the baddest **** center channel and then go with the fronts and then surrounds so that way everything is timbre matched?

cheddar

Although the center channel is important for dialog, the LR Fronts will be doing the heavy lifting for the rest of a movie track. I would look for a well balanced front 3 instead of just a big center. Make sure the dialog isn't weak on the center so that it gets lost, leading you to crank the volume so that the fx sounds are too loud. But the LR mains will be the ones to produce the slam and atmosphere that really make a HT sing...

cheddar

Also, I don't own the 990, but in general the pre's that are out now lack the latest electronics such as TrueHD and DTS-HD MA decoding and hdmi connectivity. You might want to wait until next month to see what's new from CES before starting a HT with older equipment.

JoshParsons84

Note taken Cheddar thank you. I don't think I was ready to commit to buying anything yet anyways, because I haven't dont NEARLY enough research yet. I'm taking my time this time. I FINALLY got the money to get something nice not like Classe nice but to have a nice HT and I'm gonna research and find out what I want out of a system and take my time one piece at a time. Also Cheddar what do you recommend for a good start up front for the left, center and right? I could be going ahead and looking at the different speakers also. I'm the most concerned about my pre/pro and amp though. I feel like everything will come into place once my "start" is established, being the electronics. I've been told that having a receiver as a pre/pro actually takes away sound quality. And I'm all 100% about sound quality. I'm just as anal about SQ in my car as I am in my house.

cheddar

I think you're doing it right by taking your time and researching. I would try and demo as much product as you can.

As for speakers, I've been quite happy with my LSi series 15s and LSiC for the front stage. They are great for music as well as HT. And from my experience, they really improve based on the quality of the electronics you hook them up to. With your interest in pre/pros and seperate amplification, the LSis will really reward you going that route. With my 250wpc (400wpc into 4ohms) amps, the highs are very crisp and detailed and the 15s give low bass slam even when I turn the subwoofer off. I'm sure there are better more exotic speakers out there, but bang for the buck, it's hard to go wrong with the LSis (I think there was a post of a great sale at Frys on here somewhere...)

And if you're all about sound, then you should really be looking at the next gen high-def (blu-ray, hd-dvd) sound formats. You will find an alphabet soup of formats here ... DD+, DTS-HD (not master audio) etc. But the only formats you should be concerned with are the lossless ones of which there are three. Uncompressed LPCM, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio. The studio master for each disk is how the original sound mixer meant for each movie sound track to sound. For everything except the lossless formats, the compression and decompression process throws out sound information from the original master leading to a truncated listening experience much as audio CDs sound thin compared to vinyl LPs (or even SACD, DVD-A) because of a similar lossy process.

The only way to get at these lossless tracks is to have the player decode it and send it out over analog outs (like SACD and DVD-A), send it out over hdmi, or bitstream it over hdmi 1.3 and have the pre/pro decode it. At the present time, most players will handle Uncompressed LPCM and TrueHD in some form. Fewer can bitstream. But the pre/pros that can accept and decode all the lossless formats including DTS-HD MA are very rare. Onkyo makes a model cloned under two different names for around $1600 street (DTC-9.8 (Integra) and PR-SC885P (Onkyo Pro)), although demand for these makes scoring one difficult. And denon has one that's like $7000 IIRC.

Since you've got time and are building from the ground up, it really might be worth your while to wait and see what the new year brings. As for the amp and speaks, demoing different combinations should keep you entertained and busy in the meantime! .

BaggedLancer

Sid the Kid has a 990 I believe, should ask him for his impressions of it. If I remember he said it's great for home theater, awful for music....in his words.

As for the amp, seems people are having good luck with the Emotiva equipment. If you don't want something new go for the Adcoms or Outlaw monoblocks for home theater. An abundance of power at a very inexpensive cost.

JoshParsons84

I've got approximately $20,000 coming from a car settlement somewhere around New Years maybe February and roughly $10,000 of it I can probably do for HT and all that stuff so I wanna do something nice. I can probably have enough time to start demoing as much as I can.

At the local Circuit City we've got Polk Monitor 40's 50's and 70's to demo and Boston Acoustics (not sure what model) along with some good Denon's and Onkyo's. Best Buy has Klipsch and Yamaha. There's also this place called Sodaro's that has Paradigm Monitor's. I might go check them out. But as you can tell I'm pretty limited as to what I can demo in person, unless I drive like 6 hours to Crutchfield's and go demo all them LOL. So I pretty much have to go by what people say and research reviews and specs.

BaggedLancer

If you're talking that kind of money I'd say go with a full emotiva setup. Judging by the reviews on the forum it's some really nice stuff and it's at really good prices. Not to mention the 5 year warranties....it's really a no brainer.

For the speakers are you looking to go 7.1 or 5.1? 1 or 2 subwoofers?

With $10k for a home theater the possibilities are huge....

JoshParsons84

What? Emotiva Pre and Amp? That's cool too. I absolutely want 7.1. I know that some say 7.1 is overkill but I don't care I want it for some reason. I don't think I'll need 2 subs just 1 good one will do. I appreciate the recommendation. I'm gonna start checking out some of Emotiva's stuff.

john22614

The Outlaw 990 produces rich, clear sound for both HT and music. I bought mine a few months ago and it crushes my old Yamaha pre out solution. The Yammie sounded flat and tiny by comparison. I hear they're coming out with a new one with the new formats next year.

MSALLA

I've never herd anything bad abouy the 990. I don't have any experience with it but I do have 2 m200 mono blocks and have no complaints what so ever.

ben62670

I have the 990, and it is very nice. I won't go as far as saying it is a 2 channel high end unit, but it has a very nice sound to it, balanced outputs, a phono input, and a very nice CD up sampling. The CD up sampling helps some bad Cd's sound like decent Cd's. Once you start getting higher up in audio you start listening to your collection, and realize just how bad some recordings are:( I don't get the fuss about future inputs. I think any good HD DVD will have a 5.1, or 7.1 analog out. I wish their was a second set of 7.1 inputs. You can get a DVI to HDMI adapter for the output if your video doesn't have a DVI input.
Also 5 year warranty, as do their amps. I would recommend a 5 channel Outlaw amp for the center, and surrounds, but a nice 2 channel for audio amp for mains.

tcrossma

john22614 wrote: »

The Outlaw 990 produces rich, clear sound for both HT and music. I bought mine a few months ago and it crushes my old Yamaha pre out solution. The Yammie sounded flat and tiny by comparison. I hear they're coming out with a new one with the new formats next year.

Which Yamaha did you have before?

john22614

I had the RXV 630....a $500 unit made in 2002

lmc7lmc7

cheddar wrote: »

... formats you should be concerned with are the lossless ones of which there are three. Uncompressed LPCM, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD Master Audio. ... pre/pros that can accept and decode all the lossless formats including DTS-HD MA are very rare.

some hidden gems here on lossless formats. What's a good site or forum for a deeper dive on this subject?

mrmusicman

I have owned my Outlaw 990 for 2-years and have been 99% satisfied with the performance and sound quality....ht and 2-channel.The only reason I didn't say 100% because nothing is perfect:D

cheddar

lmc7lmc7 wrote: »

some hidden gems here on lossless formats. What's a good site or forum for a deeper dive on this subject?

You might want to try starting with this basic summary of the whole alphabet soup...

http://www.highdefdigest.com/news/show/Joshua_Zyber/High-Def_FAQ:_Blu-ray_and_HD_DVD_Audio_Explained/1064

ohskigod

put me in the love the 990 camp. wont be upgrading it for a LOOOOONG time

danger boy

the Outlaw 990 pre amp is a good budget entry level home theater pre amp. that does pretty good on most things.. not great... but then you'd have to triple the price of it to really bump up the audio quality of it. for it's price.. esp now that they knocked a couple hundred bucks off the price. it's good deal.

JoshParsons84

Well I'm pretty confident in that's the Pre/Pro I wanna start out with, now that I'm taking my time and doing my HT experience the "right" way. I also finally got to demo those Paradigm Monitor 11's along with the CC-390. The only thing I can say is OMG! Those things are hands down THE best HT speakers I've ever heard! Now that might not be true to y'all who've had ample experience, but to me being a complete noob just about, that's awesome. I even listened to some Foo Fighters in 2-channel mode and they're just bad **** speakers. And they was even been driven off a Sony ES receiver too LOL. That's what's funny. Is they're still able to perform well off a crappy receiver like that. But I've pretty much got my mind made up about what speakers what I'm gonna get. He told me he can do them for me for 1,100 but I could probably come in with 10 100 dollar bills and get them though.