Ajax, I agree with you entirely. I have never seen a correlation between the 990 and the LMC-1 (the UL processor) - they are two very different beasts. The only things they have in common are (barring disasters for AV123) the year of their release (2005) and the distribution channel used to sell them (direct sale via the Internet). The LMC-1 is clearly as stripped down a processor as you can get and still hope to be able to sell in today's market, which is something that cannot be said of the 990. In fact, I'm surprised there's been so little talk of comparing the Emotiva DMC-1 (the "big dog") to the 990. From the perspective of feature sets, those two are much more closely matched.