For those of you who are just setting up your 990's, the questions that I would appreciate your feedback are:

1) Is the 2 channel stereo digital conversion better than the 950? Personally I found this to be the weakest link in the 950.

2) How's the upconversion from S-video to component video?

3) Is DPL IIx an true upgrade to DPL II + circle surround? Real world listening . . .

4) Is DD / DTS preformance better than the 950 ?

I previously had automatic speaker setup calibration and the ability to re-name inputs. Both I have missed since I moved to the 950 last september.

1) Are you talking about how it handles analog sources that are converted to digital, or the way that it handles stereo digital sources?

2) So far it's been great. The crossconversion can't really add anything to an s-video source, but it doesn't seem to be taking anything away either.

3) I'm still deciding - so far I have been pleased enough to consider it a step up, but I want to run more 5.1 material through it before I decide for certain how much of a step up.

4) I don't know that straight processing of DD and DTS is much different, but the overall the 990's sound is cleaner and clearer than the 950 (I think Jed M called it warmer, and that's a pretty decent description).

Gonk

In regards to question 1, I was specifically referring to the digital to analog conversion for 2 channel, not the analog bypass.

When I compare to my DVD/SACD player run in 2 channel to the analog bypass, I find I consistently prefer the Sony over direct PCM digital conversion by the 950.

When I got my Yamaha DVD-S1500 last year, I found that the stereo analog output was somewhere between equal to and better than the 950's onboard DAC, so I used stereo bypass a fair bit. So far, I have found that I prefer the 990's DAC (particularly when combined with upsampling) to the Yamaha's analog output in bypass mode.