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.