Round 1 Battle Of The Budget Prepros It Has Begun
What a incredible first round! Outlaw informed me this morning that I would not be getting my amp for another 4 to 5 days. So I did the only thing I could, bring it to Brian's house. We just started hooking up everything. Calibration of course without the outlaw microphone, we just used the rat shack meter. We started our first test with Eric Clapton reptile in DTS. This is a concert DVD with excellent sound. My initial impression was that the bass was in your face, and Eric Clapton guitar was in the house. We swapped out all cables pretty fast and listened to it on the Nad T163. There was no comparison, the Nad sounded flat and lifeless in comparison. Both prepro are using the Nad T973 amp. We hooked up the wires back to the Outlaw and BAM, in your face realism.

This is just the first test, and I will post more later.
Pictures are located on the AV123 site

Nice pics. I'm looking forward to your feedback, Jeffrey.

Thanks for posts....being a fence sitter, it is nice to hear more possitve info.

Wow looking forward to the Comparison between the 990 & LCM-1
good job so far!

Thanks to all for your kind posts. Here is some lengthy detail about what we did today.

I originally was one of the early adopters of the 950. It was my first entry into separates. I still have all the original updates from long ago. I was really happy with my system, I thought it sounded great. When Outlaw announced its new 990 I thought it was a no brainer. Sell my old 950 for like $500, and upgrade for another $600.

Unfortunately my original plan was to bye the EMO bid dogs, but circumstances forced me to pay my rent instead. Emo big dogs, or out in the street. So when I heard about the EMO Lites I was pretty excited after the disappointment of not being able to get the big dogs. Steve-O lovingly told me not to sweat it. Imagine a sales person not pushing for you to spend more money. Steve-O whenever you are in the NYC you are more than welcome to stay with me.

Anyway, Brian and myself went to the NYCHE show last month and were really excited about hearing the 990. The demo sounded good but was clearly underwhelming to me. I started thinking maybe it is not even worth the upgrade.

I got on the pre-order list a day late, so I just received mine last Saturday. The box had some damage but their was tape over it. When we took it out of the double box it looked like it might been opened before. All the accessories were in a sealed bag so no worries there. As you can see from the pictures, the thing is huge.

Initial setup was not to hard, one thing I hate hate hate is OSD just to setup everything. Like a monkey I was pressing buttons for at least a half-hour grunting and scratching my head. Then I finally figured out I had to set it up through the OSD. On the 950 you could do everything on the front display on the prepro which I loved. I think it sucks to have to set it up this way, anyway I figured it out and it was no big deal. Just a personal preference.

Once we had the thing up and calibrated with an Avia disk and Rat Shack meter, we started the demo's. As mentioned before Eric Clapton was first up. I was really impressed how real the guitar was. It really felt as if EC was in the house. We quickly switched wires because Brian was anxious to see if we were really going to hear a difference. Sure enough the the music seemed two dimensional, flat in comparison. We switched back and POW, it was all there again.

The next demo disk we chose was Diana Krall live in Paris. This is a DTS DVD with some great sound. In playing the look of love in DTS I noticed that the 990 really reveals all the details on a track in clear way. There were little noises that we did not hear as loud and did not notice until listening with the 990.

Lord Of The Rings was another disk we tried out, and again the 990 played the track with great detail and clarity. You could hear every little noise and the experience was more 3 dimensional.

You can't have any kind of listening session without some Star Wars. We put in Attack of The Clones and jumped to the Obi-Won verse Jango fett scene. It really sounded great. I am happy I got the oppurtunity to listen to this with my own stuff. By comparing it to the NAD it helped solidify that this prepro is a great bye and sounds fantastic. Last but not least we put in a SACD of Steely Dan that I could not get to hear in SACD mode. It would only play in CD mode. So we will tinker and listen more tomorrow. What a great way to recover from surgery. For those sitting on the fence the 990 is very impressive and will make you happy. If you want to spend less money and give up some features then the EMO lites might be for you.

Jeffrey: How do you compare both 950 and 990, as a user? How much improvement? I'm awaiting mine to come.

Kwok

It's not hard to setup the 990 once you figure out that you have to use the OSD. I think the improvement is definately worth the upgrade. You can sell your 950 for $500. To upgrade another $600 for this new unit is definately worth it. I sold my 950 many months ago, so I can't type here and say I remember what my 950 sounds use to sound like. You might have to ask somebody out there who has been able to compare the two.

Jeffrey: Tks for advice. I saw Gonk's review. He perceived 7.24% improvement from 950. Hee heeeeee.

I am awaiting my 990 now.

I'm new to this forum so please excuse my ignorance here, but how do I view the pictures of the pre/pro?

Thanks.

Dntblnk22,

try here...
http://www.outlawaudio.com/products/990_gallery1.html