There’s no question that all of that bulk allows the 770 to kick major butt. This amplifier was able to grab onto the Snells and pummel them into submission with even the most-difficult material, so if you want to play the home theater guy to get you out of your lease, go ahead and crank up your favorite Arnold—pardon me, Governor Schwarzenegger—action sequence. Don’t think,
however, that the Outlaw is just the electronic equivalent of Conan the Barbarian;
with its warm, transparent sound, the Outlaw can
also do a great job with
subtler material like
The Sopranos soundtrack.
LEXICON
Lexicon’s designers have always beaten their own drum when it comes to new product design, and the MC-8 is no exception. A tweaker’s dream, this processor gives you control over parameters most of us probably never even thought about, yet at the same time, it eschews some of the features that we take for granted on other designs. Lexicon refers to it as the little brother of its flagship MC-12, but that’s a bit like saying a Porsche 911 Turbo is the little brother of the 911 GT3. While it is perhaps technically correct, I think I could get by just fine with the MC-8 (or the 911 Turbo, for that matter). The main difference between the two involves the scope of system they can handle, and those building a really fancy rig may find the MC-8 a bit limiting. For starters, there’s no tuner section, so if you want a radio you’ll have to add one. Phono stage? Sorry,
Wish You Were Here will have to be digital. Then consider that there’s only one audio-video output that can be used for a VCR, cassette deck, or DVD recorder, and it also serves as the zone 2 output. Configuring a 5.1 input for a high-res audio player will eat up three of the eight audio inputs, and even then there’s no way to incorporate bass management with an analog 5.1 signal. So if your system is getting out of hand, you might want to step up to the MC-12. But for us average folks, the MC-8 will deliver a truly astounding level of control and adjustability, and comparing it to most other processors is kind of like comparing a Piper Cherokee to the Space Shuttle. To describe all of these adjustments would require a whole article unto itself, but let’s just say that you’re unlikely to find a sonic issue that the MC-8 can’t deal with. Rest assured that this THX Ultra 2–certified processor can decode all of the relevant Dolby Digital and DTS surround formats, along with Lexicon’s own Logic 7 and a host of other modes for extracting surround information from two-channel sources.
