I think you'd really enjoy the 990, DOJ - and you've already had experience with the MPS-1.

I have the 990 paired with an ATI 2005. I was waiting for the 7500 and I was pretty sure after talking to Outlaw that it was going to be built by ATI. I got a very good deal on the ATI 2005 just two days before the 7500 showed up on the website. I really like the 990/2005 combo. No regrets here. After the announcement and a one-to-one comparison between the spec sheets you could tell the 7500 was the cousin of the ATI 2005. I feel like I'm still in the Outlaw family with the 2005. I tried five 2200 monoblocks, but for several reasons sent them back. Outlaw provided great customer service.

AndrewS: I looked for a Sherbourn 5/1500A for a few months but none showed up on e-bay or Audiogon. Five mono-blocks in a single box is a pretty cool concept. It would be interesting to do an A-B test on the 7500 vs. the 5/1500A.

DOJ, I agree with Gonk; you'd like the 990.

Thanks gonk and Avfan . I think I will call on Monday and order a new 990 .

Do you guys use balanced cables ? And do you use the ones from this sight ? If so how do you feel about the quality ?

Thanks, Kurt

DOJ,

Let us know if you get the 990. It works well for me!

I use Outlaw balanced cables and they are well made. Just one caution: the balanced cables are pretty stiff. The 0.5 meter ones were not long enough so I went with the 1.2 meter ones. Now I have cable length I don't need taking up space behind my equipment cabinet. No big deal, though. Enjoy!

None of my amps have balanced inputs, so my choice was obvious. I've got a fair assortment of Outlaw cables, though, and they are all very well made. The Outlaw balanced cables are of the same quality, and from what I've seen they are more affordable than most of the alternatives - if I were going to get balanced cables, I'd get the PCB's.

AVFan,

I agree with you that the 2005 seems to share a number of things with the 7500. It's hard to sort out exactly what the relationship is between ATI and Outlaw with any degree of certainty, though they do seem to share key personnel and production facilities.

If I had to guess, I'd say that ATI invested quite a lot in their production facility, but they didn't sell enough volume to amortize that cost in a reasonable time frame. The solution may have been to create a secondary "value" brand using the same parts, the same plant, the same personnel, and have different costmetics for the different brands, even though the internals are similar/(or possibly even the same). They had to rebrand the "value brand" so as not to alienate their existing dealer network who are selling the similar ATI gear at substantially higher price points. Outlaw doesn't show internal pics of the new 7500/7700 internals, so it's hard to say for sure unless someone wants to open up their 7500/7700 and post the pics.

Cheers,

Ritz,

I have found that many HT brands offer similar, if not the same, products as their competitors. For example the Outlaw 950 was rebadged by two (Sherbourn and ??) other companies and the 990 shares so much with the Sherwood. When researching plasma TVs three years ago, the Hitachi I bought had the same glass as Sony. Outlaw and ATI's relationship may very well be as you have surmised.

This caused me to look a little deeper into the products I found interesting. Was there an alternative to a piece of gear that would cost less but provide identical or similar features? What other factors should I consider (e.g customer service, warranty,)? I chose Outlaw for their products, customer service and 30 day return policy. I like my 990 and their customer service has been very good, plus I did take advantage of the 30-day return policy. Outlaw has more than met my expectations.

Back to this thread...I'm comfortable that Outlaw, if asked, would say that the 2005 is a good match for the 990 given the similarities with the 7500.

Its all good, now back to the movie...

My 990 just arrived yesterday. I'll be driving 7 channels of Krell, recently purchased used on AudiogoN -- KAV-250a for R/L, KAV-500 for the others.

This is a step up to separates from a 9 year old Denon AVR-5600/Definitive Tech system. Until the 990 came I was driving the Krells with the pre-outs on the Denon, so I'll be able to compare just the Denon/990 swap.

Let us know how they compare. Also, are you still running DT's or do you have different speakers?

Magnepan 3.6's for L/R, waiting on Maggie CC4 release for center (took out the Def Tech CC as it was just too different in timbre and am using a phantom center at the moment). Still have the DT surrounds, which didn't seem like too much of a mismatch using the Denon, but the surrounds get so much more action with the 990 that I can't stand listening to crystal in front with mud from the sides. I'm going to have to accelerate the purchase of MC1's to replace them, which I wasn't planning to do until after I move in April due to wall mounting considerations.

So with the speaker situation clouding the surround evaluation, the only meaningful comparison I can make is for stereo and the concise review is "awesome". I wasn't expecting much more from the 990 vs. the Denon in stereo but the difference is readily apparent, for both SACD/analog in bypass mode and for CD/optical in upsample mode. I guess that says that for SACD the Denon digital path must have been mucking up the signal, as the 990 in bypass isn't doing anything much to it, except maybe simple amplification.

For surround, even though I can't do a meaningful comparison of sound quality, the 990 is certainly sending more content to the surrounds than was the Denon (both in DD 5.1 mode), even though both were calibrated for equal SPL level using the Denon and 990 manual calibration modes.