I asked a rather rhetorical question a week or two ago that may bear repeating here. What does an $1100 processor sound like? Is there a defining metric that we can apply to equate list price to every person's perception of a product's sonic characteristics? Steven Simon's been around the online home theater community for a long while and has used an MC-1 off and on for years now. I happen to trust his opinion. He searched around a fair bit before settling on the MC-1 several years ago, then switched to a Model 950 for a year or so I believe before switching back to the MC-1, and now it appears that he may have found something that can give him the features of a current-generation processor and the sound he has come to expect after using the MC-1. The 990's processing is a couple generations farther along than the MC-1's, which is likely to help for certain cases. The 990 is also an $1100 processor based on the chassis of a $1500 processor with several feature upgrades added. As I've said before, we need to be very careful classifying gear purely by pricetag alone.