Mark, I am a very satisfied 990 owner myself. I think the point Jack was trying to make is, there is very little difference between processors when using analog inputs as all the processing is bypassed in the processor and handled by the player. If you were to compare a Lexicon MC12 to the 990 using analog inputs, you would hear very little difference.

Most of us use digital inputs for movies, thus utilizing the processor's DACs and not the player. This is what would seperate the 990 from a MC12 or AVP700 perhaps and why Jack suggests doing the comparison with digital input.