Hi, post got deleted last night I guess, is the 990 a slight difference or big difference from the 2500 thanks

I posted to this last night. The short of it was:

If you looking to buy the 2500 (street ~$500) and are maily watching movies, the 990 will not give you twice the performance for twice the price.

If you already have the 2500 and are wondering if it is worth ~$500 to upgrade to the 990 as you should be able to sell the 2500 for about $500 (I did several weeks back)...to me, yes it is worth it. Movies are a good deal better though not twice as good. 2-channel music is easily twice as good and then some. These are just my opinions, so take them with a grain of salt.

I also posted last night in response to your post, like I said I usually don't listen to 2 channel music I kind of like the imersion of the 7 channel music, and i listen to sacd's in the yammys multi channel and of course movies in dd and dts I'm going to say probably 70% music and 30% movies the reson I'm thinking about this is I bought the 7125 and if I decide within 30 days I can get the 990 at the combo price thanks Doug

No problem, it was a hard decision for me at first as well (and even harder to convince my wife), but once I listened to the 990 there was no going back for me.

The 990 was a better music player than the V1400, although once I brought in a Meridian 518 to front end my digital sources, the V1400 was more than enjoyable to listen to compared to the 990. The V1400 stayed out of the way more with the Direct Stereo mode. The 990 still wanted to do bass management even in bypass. Wasn't the same. Still, the stage and smoothness was better with the 990.

Without the 518 in place? Who knows. I wouldn't even mess with the pre/pro then. CD player direct into my stereo preamp beat both the pre/pros for the the most part (would really have liked a nice external DAC to have tried the 518 into my stereo preamp, but no such luck).

As for movies, the 990 easily took the V1400, in the one area I have any critical judgement, dialog clarity. Went through LotR and SW OT; the 990 easily gave the nicer presentation.

Do note, I don't use any of the V1400 amps. All outboard. My V1400 does not have PLIIx, but LotR and SW OT are already 6.1 material, so the 990's advantage here is minor. But it was a very nice advantage for 5.1 material (Halo and Halo2 on the XBox).

Also, I only ever used the V1400 with YPAO doing its thing. While the EQ swings seemed a bit large, I never bothered to try it without them. Maybe the V1400 would have done better in the dialog clarity area without excessive eq'ing.

The 990 is annoying from a control perspective. The 990 has no OSD and the front panel display is terrible with regards to the input signal and the surround processing mode. Also, I miss the Yamaha being able to tell me specific data regarding the incoming bitstream.

As for your multichannel analog audio input, I think the Yamaha did no bass management on the multichannel analog audio input, while the 990's bass management cannot by bypassed. So I think the specific nature of if that suits you will be a factor. For me, it was a problem had I wanted to consolidate my A/V and music playback into the 990. I have no multichannel analog source to say how it would suit.


Do what I did. Get it. Try it. Return it if it doesn't suit you. For the cost, I think you're out $40 shipping or so?, it's hardly a cost concern just to try.

thats what I'm going to do, it is on it's way, asked them to ship on friday so some one will be home on saturday to sign for it, also a question, should I use the icbm for my bass mgt or should I use the internals in the 990? right now I have the icbm between the yammy and the 7125 which is what I was planning on doing with the 990,would that help with the bass mgt problems,that was the reason I have been a little worried about purchasing the 990. Also smac I still have a rxv1400 that I have been trying to sell replaced it with the 2500

I would have thought you would have placed the ICBM between the DVDA/SACD player and the Yamaha, since then how do you get the ICBM out of the way for normal material via digital inputs and stereo analog input where the Yamaha does the bass management? Are all speakers simply set to large?

As for with the 990, I would expect the ICBM to become unnecessary, since the 990 can do bass management on the multichannel analog input as well as the digital inputs and stereo analog inputs. Or I guess you could go the all-large route and still use the ICBM. But what does it offer you in functionality versus the 4-way crossover setup of the 990?

The way I have it set-up now ,I have bass mgt on every thing not just the sacd and dvd-a, yes the speakers are set to large in the yamaha, before I got the 7125 I had it between the dvd player and the 2500,but it seems to sound better between the 2500 and the amp