Very sorry to hear about your experience Pythagore, but one of three things is happening:

1. You said you liked the auto-setup feature, which tells me you used it to setup the 990. This feature has been shown to occasionally do wierd things to speaker configurations, and it is quite possible that the sound characteristics you are describing are caused by an incorrect speaker setup.

2. You received a defective unit. Not as likely, but as always with manufactured products it is possible.

3. If you went from a receiver to a good pre/pro amp combination and are primarily listening to MP3s (as was suggested in an earlier post you made to this forum), you may be hearing flaws in the encoded source material for the first time. I know in my experience MP3s sound pretty good on mass-market home stereo, car stereos and computer sound systems, but can sound pretty god-awful on a real audiophile system.

Hope this works out for you.