First thoughts after opening the boxes? Man, this thing IS big. I thought my old Kenwood was pretty good size, but this thing won't even fit in the same shelf. I had to put it on the top shelf of my right hand rack.

Set everything up per the manual and attempted to go through the Autocalibrate procedure...Dang that thing does the test signals LOUD! I thought my sub was gonna blow it was so loud.

So I manually calibrated the channel levels.

What did I play first? The lobby scene of The Matrix, natch, I just love that and the following helicopter/gatling gun scene.

Was totally blown away! I could totally hear all of the individual effects. I've never heard those scenes with such definition. I literally cried it was that cool to hear.

OK So back to the autocalibrate problems. It goes through it and the test tone for the sub is just way too loud. Is this normal? Much louder than the 75db signal put out by the manual tests. What's even worse is that after all that it says that the sub isn't plugged in.

So, I guess using the autocalibrate function isn't in the picture for now.

Not that it matters though, frickin thing sounds awesome! My sub sounds a bit anemic for my current room though...a powered sub is probably in my near future.

Oh, and whoever asked for more coax digital audio inputs was right. Two is probably not enough. Luckily for me, the HD DirecTivo box only has optical out and not coax.

Anyhow, what do I think so far? Outstanding, very much worth the money.

Glad to hear that it's working out so well for you! The sub's test tone is full range, which may throw you off a bit - especially if you have a passive sub and can't flip on the low-pass crossover.

Yeah, it's a passive.

Alex

BloggingITGuy - I felt the same way... I can't imagine how good my system sounds and I don;t even have a dedicated amp! I am upgrading my speakers to Swan 5.1 or 4.1 first and just can't wait to hear 990 through new speakers.

Enjoy!