Hi, All: I'd like to apologize in advance for this long-winded post. I've been a member of the Saloon and a proud Model 1050 owner for years now, and boy have things changed since about 2002!!! It's time to upgrade, and I'm going to buy either a 990 or 970, and I need a bit of help in making the decision. The components of interest are thus: I have a Crown XL602D power amp w/balanced XLR inputs to drive my Maggie 3.6's. The Maggies will be my L/R main speaks and will be used for 2 channel listening a great deal of the time. I would like to use the Outlaw balanced interconnects coming out of the 990 to the inputs of the Crown amp to run the Left and Right mains, and the Outlaw RCA cables to hook up the rest of the surround outs to the inputs of my older Parasound 5-channel amp for the rest of my speaks. My main concern is this: will I run into any problems using the 2 different types of outputs (XLR + RCA)? I really love the Crown amp on the Maggies, and I need to use XLR's to feed it signal. If using this type of setup would cause problems, would I be better of selling the Crown, buying a big 2-channel with RCA ins for my Maggies, and say, Just go with the 970 instead of the 990, to save some dough? Movie performance is quite important to me, but as a musician and audiophile, the 2-channel performance is paramount. Were I given unlimited funds, none of these questions would be germane, as I would separate the two systems completely! If I do need to go the "all RCA" route, will the 970 give me the same 2-channel audio performance of the 990? Geez, I know that's a lot to digest, but I'm sure Gonk and other long-timers can help me out here. Thanks so much in advance folks, I'd really like to move ahead with this, and buy my new processor!!!


Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thanks all, for you time! Jeff

I don't think you'd have a problem with this set-up. You get a little more gain with th balanced outs than with the RCA's but especially since your using a seperate amplifier, your going to have to do some trim adjustments anyhow.

Jeff,

Mixing channels out of the 990 with some on XLR and some on RCA is not a problem. It's also not a problem on the inputs to the 7500.

I'm running the in line equalizer for my Kef 107s between the 990 and 7500 and, as it only has RCA connectors, the left and right main channels leave the 990 and enter the 7500 through RCA connectors. The center and surround channels need no equalization and run between the two units on balanced cables with XLR connectors. The amp gain is different on the balanced and unbalanced inputs but this is not a problem, as the 990 allows you to adjust relative output levels on a channel by channel basis.

Reviews of the 970/990 suggest that the 990 sounds better for stereo listening. I've not heard both so I have no direct input on that issue.

Unless you've got some other reason to replace your amp, the configuration you propose should work well.

Thanks for the clarification on this. Now that I know these things, the 990 definitely seems the way to go. Thanks Again, Jeff.

I'll second (third?) KOYAAN and mahansm on this - I've got five of my seven amp channels connected to balanced outputs of the 990 while the other two (side surrounds) are using unbalanced. Channel trim will handle the differences in gain.

Yes,Yes,Yes!!! Again; a big thanks! I just used a couple of Hosa RCA to XLR 1M cables coming out of my trusty 1050 pre-outs(L&R Main) to my brand new(to me) Crown XLS602D, and WOW! I can't wait to run XLR to XLR from the 990 to this amp! I can't believe that a receiver I bought in 2002 has a 2-ch pre-out that still sounds so great! Not to mention how great my movies sound... Boy, am I saving even harder for that 990 now! It's a comfort to know that I can easily balance all of the multi-ch levels, no matter whether RCA or XLR inputs are used. After that, it's an Outlaw for the other five channels, for sure(right now, I'll just use my wonderful 1050's speaker outs). Thanks Again, Jeff.