Great discussion so far. I hooked up the beast last night, my first negative is indeed the size. Certainly not a killer for me, but I do wish it were smaller. I still have a ways to go before I can attest to other issues, but so far, so good.

950 has double bass issue. Has this issue removed from 990?

There are two scenarios on the 950 that are capable of producing "double bass": stereo bypass when the mains are set to "small" and the 5.1 analog input when the analog bass management switch is set to "off."

The Model 990 does not have analog bass management on its 7.1 direct input. Instead, it either uses the digital bass management or (if all speakers are set to large) bypasses any bass management at all. Therefore, there is no potential for double bass on the 7.1 direct input.

I'm not entirely sure how the stereo analog bypass behaves - I thought I knew, but some recent discussion is making me reconsider that. There may still be a potential situation where the mains get a full-range signal but the sub also gets a copy of that signal that is taken from below the crossover point for those speakers - this would create a double bass condition, but it would (as with the 950) be in a frequency range where the mains are presumably dropping off severely, making it more like 1.5x bass or 1.2x bass.

I didn't realize this. I thought they were using the same analog bass management that the 950 had. Guess you learn something everyday.

Add another issue with the 990...

Sometimes the remote will not power on the 990. The only way I have found to solve this is to press a video input selection. Power button has been flakey...

EDIT: Thanks for the clarification below!

The Power button is a discrete OFF command. It will never turn the 990 on. The audio and video input selectors are combination discrete on/source commands. These (the input selectors) are the buttons that must be used to turn the Model 990 on.

And the power button thing is one of the best things about Outlaw, albeit it might be confusing for family members at first. I had an RCA satelitte receiver that did the same thing and I still miss it. To anybody who sees this as a negative, get a learning remote and try to do macros without discretes.

I don't have one, am just shopping at this point, but the biggest negative for me is the lack of a separate Rec Out circuit. I think the Zone 2 can work for this, but not sure. Definitely have to figure this out if I am to consider this an option.

Really too bad they didn't just do HDMI. Why are wire converters easy for consumers, but coping with a changing HDMI spec difficult? That just doesn't compute.

Don't get me wrong, I have chosen to keep the 990 because it sounds better than the 4ES, but if I did not have speakers that were matched, I would miss the EQ.

Unfortunately for me, I prefer my Denon 3910's audio DACs enough that I wanted it to handle my SACD/DVD-A bass management, as well as avoiding unnecessary A/D conversions. In order to do this without enabling the 990's bass management, I had to set my speakers to Large on the 990. According to the very helpful Steve, from tech support, this also disables the bass management on *every other* input as well. This should not be the case. If I want analog bypass on something designed for high-resolution sound like the 7.1 inputs, it should be a simple electronic or analog switch that toggles it for that input only. Fortunately the only sound I listen to digitally is from Xbox and DirecTV, but if/when that changes, I'll want the flexibility to easily use both bypass and the 990s bass management and assign them to whatever inputs I wish.

Rick