Well, after searching through different brands of pre/pro for my next upgrade, I ended up ordering Outlaw 990. For what it offers for the money compare to other pre/pro, you just can't beat 990. Although I haven't had a chance to hear the sonic quality of 990, I am fairly certain 990 will be a keeper since I was extremely satisfied with 950 unit. Even on the used equipment market, it is difficult to find better value. Occasionally I found very compelling older unit for sale albeit older processing power for a reasonable price (very expensive as brand new), but none offers flexibility like the 990. I had few chance to listen to more expensive units through the local dealers but nothing was sounding significantly better than 950 system in my home even though in-store HT system was setup using their finest equipments. After comparing all the pros and cons of what 990 offers against other pre/pros, like so many other Outlaw forum members here, I found it is very difficult to beat the value it offers. Sure you can find similarly featured and priced unit like Rotel RSP 1068, Sherwood P965, Adcom GTP series, etc. but when you combine the great product and outstanding customer support Outlaw provides, I will vote for Outlaw 990. Now all I need to do is wait for my 990 to arrive to my home, hopefully before Labor day weekend.

I think you will be more than satisfied. The 990 sounds great, and is incredibly flexible in its connection options. I believe you made the right choice, and I cannot recommend the 990 (or, quite frankly, any Outlaw product I have used) highly enough.

Not only does Outlaw offer excellent prices on their equipment, but the sonic performance rivals high-end equipment. I make this statement because oftentimes, when someone reads "value", "bargain", "excellent for the money", images of less than stellar performance come to mind, feeling that the reviewer has to say something to satisfy his or her advertisers, but that ultimately the equipment has serious drawbacks or performance issues. I have never heard anything in the mid-range or lower HT or audio products that come close to Outlaw, and I personally have never heard anything in a home system that sounds as good, let alone better. In addition, I can only think of one or two "showcase" systems I have ever heard that sounded better, but these were showroom systems running $50k+, set up and tweaked (I'm sure) for weeks or months inside high end specialty retailers.

I've said it before--I just don't think you can noticeably outdo Outlaw's performance without spending a ridiculous amount of additional money.

Yep, the return on investment drops rapidly in the audio biz once you pass the pricing region occupied by the Outlaws and the Arcams of the world. It's a virtually logarithmic wall to scale to eke out that last itty little bit of "I feel like I'm there" performance.

For about $3.5k of outlaw gear plus a decent universal player plus a decent set of speakers you're looking at an easy $6-7k. That's a fairly substantial chunk of change unless you're really into your music/movies or have a lot of extra jingle burning a hole in your pocket. That gets you (in my humble opinion) somewhere in the mid 90th percentile in terms of audio quality. Assume that each addtional percentage point towards the unreachable 100% can easily double the cost of the equipment.

Now that's just my generalisation and using new prices. Someone who's got the time and energy to circle audiogon or ebay might do a lot better (or a lot worse if they get dud gear), but no matter how you slice it, it's a somewhat expensive hobby. If you can afford it, Meridian or Levinson or Classe or (ad nauseum) can certainly fit the bill. I just can't see spending many times that initial $6-7k number to get from "95%" to "99%" on the wow scale.

Cheers,

Not to mention the fact that someone who can truly afford to spend such massive amounts of rubles probably isn't searching posts in here for advice.

Of course, if there is such a person reading this, I'd be happy to advise you on what overpriced equipment you need to buy for one easy payment of 10%. Satisfaction guaranteed.

WOW, I am pretty impress with the overnight DHL shipment from Outlaw office east coast all the way to Hawaii. It actually arrived "overnight", they shipped my 990 Oct 31 and arrived Sep 1. I didn't expect to receive it perhaps until Sep 2. Other overnight shipment usually took 2 days to arrive to Hawaii previously. Anyway, by the time I was home it was almost 9:00 pm but I had to open the box and at least hook the thing up. It took me about little more than one hour to finish the installation (actually it took me 30 minutes to cut out the back of equipment rack). Even though I anticipated the size of 990, it was still HUGE and it barely fit into my equipment rack.

There were few people who complaint that 990 was aesthetically not pleasing or "butt-ugly" but to me it was rather good looking piece of equipment. True this thing will not win any beauty contest compare to other exotic one out there but even my wife made a comment how "nice looking" and it looks lot better than picture that I showed her before I ordered. So WAF was very high for my case!

After my initial setup, the first thing that I noticed was that main remote wasn't working properly although 2nd remote worked accordingly. So after several attempt, I manually reset the system twice before main remote starting to work properly. I will find out more in next few days if my remote is working properly or not, hopefully it will be ok. Next I tried the auto setup mode with microphone attached but it was no good for me since it gave consistently to set my surround speakers as large and front pairs as small which is not consistent with my speaker setup. And speaker distant was all mixed up as well. I will play with it more next few days for sure but no big deal for me even if it doesn't work since I like to calibrate manually anyway.

By this time it was getting really late so I couldn't crank any volume up and beside I have to go to work early tomorrow. I will update my impression with 990 after I have a chance to play with it next few days. As I was writing this message, I played some Enya CD using DOLB PL IIx mode in low volume, my wife who normally doesn't care about this hobby mentioned how nice the sound was. Hopefully I will have more time this weekend to evaluate 990 and report back my impression.

Good to see you received the 990 as fast as you made the decision to get one. I believe you will enjoy it as much as I am. I received mine mid of July, the automatic setup did return an accurate measurement distance for my mains and surrounds at 14ft & 6ft, respectively. But it gave a wrong 12 ft for subwoofer as it is 6 ft away only, maybe the low frequency is harder to pinpoint? BTW what kind of speakers you're using at what crossover settings, you mind?

RW,

Front Pair: Sound Dynamics RTP-100 X-OVER 80HZ
Center: Def Tech CLR 2500 X-OVER 80HZ
Surround Pair: Sound Dynamics RTS-7 X-OVER 100HZ
B. Surround Pair: Sound Dynamics RTS-7 X-OVER 100HZ
Sub: SVS PC Ultra & DIY SUB w/ Avalanche 18" driver
Amps: Adcom GFA 5800(2 channels) and Outlaw 755(5 channels)

I tried my automatic setup again but same strange result, but no problem. I calibrated manually and started to testing the features. My son played his XBOX using S-Video connection cross converted to component out to RPTV and the screen never looked better. The only video cross convertion didn't work for me was my old VHS composite video to component video. It just gives very unstable picture, not a big deal for me since S-Video cross conversion works fine.

I am enjoying tremendously "upsampling" sound from my CD player even though DOLBY PL IIx is right there for music processing mode favorite as well. I believe two channel music processing is big improvement compare to 950. As far as HT surround sound mode, it is very close to 950 in my ear. So far I am extremely happy with the performance of 990. I still have long way to go before I explore all the features of 990, hopefully I will have more time over this weekend.

I believe you will like the sound even better with DVD audio (7.1) such as "Another one bites the dust" in "The Game" of Queen... I have 990 for more than 1 month now and am thinking about selling my 5 channel THX Adcom amp GFA-7500 for the Outlaw 7125. Hope to see your thought after exploring more of the 990 features.

RW,

While I heartily encourage you to buy equipment from Outlaw, the GFA-7500 is a nice amp. If you just need two additional "back channels", it might be more cost effective to get a pair of Outlaw M200 amps to drive them rather than tossing out a perfectly good amp. Outlaw does make nice multi-channel amps, though. I'm very happy with my 755.

Cheers,

Thanks for the advice, Ritz. I will probably do so, at least not taking the next step to a 7.1 until I have a better HT by finishing the basement. At the moment now, my system though not bad but is in the restricted environment of family room (14x14), the sweet spot actually is almost same line with the surround speakers, I probably won't see much improvement by adding 2 more channels. I simply lost my confidence with Adcom after the preamp GTP750 failed recently. I wasn't the only one, my friend bought the same Adcom separates at the same time with me also have the 750 died with same situation (hangup after turn on a little while). Thanks again.
RW