My 990 has been delivered, but I don't move in for a week, so other things have delayed installation. This has led to much idle speculation concerning the 990. For example . . . .

It seems like there are many features and tricks that some of you folks have discovered by logic, hunch, intuition, and luck--things that are not in the manual. (This note was inspired by one of gonk's incredibly useful insights.) In the good old days when I was a software developer and my customers were doing these kinds of things to my products I came to realize that a detailed logic "manual" would be useful to my power users to help them discover things that even we didn't know we could do. The manuals that we eventually provided were basically sets of logical descriptions (pseudocode) of what happened when each "button was pushed" (each function was initiated), but with the details of all interactions with other functions identified.

Does anyone do that with A/V software? It could be available strictly as a PDF, perhaps with watermarks and non-disclosure agreements for (weak) IP protection, and only upon request (of course everyone in this kind of forum would know of its existence and would request it even if they never quite got around to reading it .) It might take some of the fun out of the hunt for Easter Eggs, but it would sure seem useful.

Would that be useful for 990 "power users?"

I haven't seen any manufacturers do it, although I agree that for at least some users if would be very beneficial. In general, the manuals I've used range from numbingly-poor (Sony RM-AV2100 remote comes to mind, although the Rotel 1068's manual was pretty unpleasant as well) to mediocre to pretty darned useful, with the useful ones entirely too rare. Outlaw's manuals have generally been better than average, but on a product as complex as a surround processor there are details (such as explanations of how the logic works in a bass management system) that are typically left out.

An "advanced" manual is a cool idea, even as an addition to the normal manual.