I wouldn't give up on the 990 just yet - the latest word on the reservation list suggests that folks from around April 26 received the go-ahead to place orders if they want to, which is only a week or so away from you. Depending on how many people convert reservations to orders, it sounds like the first shipment may be completely claimed, but the second shipment apparently shipped out from the factory just one month behind the first one - so even if the May reservations have to wait for that shipment to get their units, I would suspect that your turn in line would be coming around in the next couple weeks. Speaking as someone who sat on the 950 waiting list for four months and was lucky to have that short a wait, I think the 990 roll-out is going quite smoothly.

My processor chart might be of interest to you if you haven't seen it already. The Anthem entries need updating (only the AVM20 is listed), but otherwise it's fairly current. If I had no budget restrictions, I'd probably look at the Anthem Statement D1 or the Anthem AVM30 (although if there really was no budget issue, a Lexicon might be cool, too). The Anthems are very respectable choices, but the less expensive of the two (the AVM30) will set you back close to two and a half times as much money as the 990. For the price range of $1000-$1500, there's the 990, its sibling the P-965 (which you might be able to find for the same price, but with fewer features), the Rotel 1068 (which we were routinely comparing to the 950 just a couple months ago, and depending on personal preference and associated hardware the 950 was often considered preferable sonically even though the 1068 had an edge on it in newer features), and not much else.