lasher .. please dont take my last post as derogatory towards you original post .. i'm just trying to explain the many reasons they may have went that route.. just because its in the shell that just came out in the last year doesnt mean they havent been r & D on the internals for the last 3 years ..

The most obvious explanation that comes to my mind is actually the most common. In the world of business, sometimes the environment changes and you have to adjust your priorities/strategies/PRODUCTS accordingly. It's entirely possible that the Outlaws decided to cut bait on the product originally described and use an outside-designed platform for the 990.

Personally, I don't see what the big deal is. The 990 is feature competitive with the best units available (at any price) for a home theater processor and it appears to have no competition whatsoever in its price range when you consider the feature set. So who cares if it's the original concept that the Outlaws sketched onto a napkin at a trade show or not? Why is that an issue for you?

Cheers,

I passed on the 990. It was just not enough of an upgrade to my 950. Was the 990 not good enough or the 950 too good? I'll leave that up to you. For me to upgrade I would need to have a better LED display and an on screen display that would be visible through all inputs, a smaller box, HDMI switching and converting of the signal from anything to anything, and a mute button that stayed muted as long as you didn't press the mute button again.

The 990 actually has this...

Mine drops out of mute if I hit the volume control. Is that not how it's supposed to work?

MeanGene was referring to changing inputs, I thought - the 950 would un-mute when the input was changed, while the 990 retains mute even when the input is changed.

Actually I was referring to both. If I want it muted, I'll press the mute button. When I want if off mute then I'll press the mute button again. I don't want any other functions to un-mute the device, period. I think that it is completely illogical to have the system un-mute without using the mute button. The current setup reduces the choices available. The main one being able to adjust the volume level without un-muting it. This is just one of those things that's been done wrong for so long that everyone things it right now.

Having the 990 stay muted when changing inputs has been a welcome change for me. Tonygeno is absolutely right that keeping mute on while changing volume is not included on the 990, but as you say it's been done the "standard" way for so long (by which I mean that changing volume un-mutes) that most people would probably be confused if it didn't work that way - inertia is a powerful thing, probably approaching too powerful to grant much room for change in this case. The reasoning that I've always assumed for this behavior (which has been present on every component I've owned that had a mute button, as far as I can recall, which may be why I have this rationale in my head) was that volume control encompassed both the up/down controls and the mute control, such that if I asked for the volume to be changed it was assumed that I also wanted to hear it. But who knows, maybe the Model 995 will prove me wrong and include the "MeanGene mute."

Hopefully the Outlaws with right this injustice.

Here is an example of the non choice:

You are listening to your system at reference level and the phone rings you mute the system, you pick up the phone, it's not for you, it's for your spouse. Your spouse starts talking and now what do you do? You have no choice but to wait it out. (and it's your mother in-law - how long will that take?) Turn off the system? - it will un-mute at 0dB and the next time you turn it on it will be running at 0dB, switch to another input - runs at 0dB, trying to quickly turn in down - comes on at 0dB until you frantically jab at the - button until -30 or something. If you could turn down the system while it was muted, you would then have the choice to do so, a choice that you currently do not have. That's the point I was making.

*shrug*

This is a non-issue. If my mother-in-law calls, I want the mute function to sense my angst automatically and switch to 0dB.