Reads as if he got it to work using a PC via the USB connection.

I suspect the only way you can do the upgrade with a Mac is via VirtualPC. I haven't downloaded up upgrade yet, as I am hesistant to attempt it via VPC.

My upgrade went very smooth using a laptop PC and USB cable. Didn't do much for me, Large Mains and LFE Only did not change. I would have liked to seen the digitalization on the 7.1 optional, without having to set all speakers to Large.

I agree Bypass should bypass the BM but what it is doing is summing the L&R when the L&R speakers are small, when IMHO it should be (L+R)/2, at least in my system it appears to work that way. Can anyone actually use the summed bass without cutting the sub level down by about half? Maybe it is just my system? The problem with hooking the sub directly to the player LFE is you lose any re-directed bass from any speaker set to small.

The problem is I don't want to have to be switching speaker sizes around continuously. Many of us are using projectors with digital inputs so we don’t have easy access to the on screen displays. I would like to cross my mains at 40hz and the rest at 80hz and leave it at that. I can’t do that unless I want my stereo Bypass bass to be about two times hotter then it should be. I also can’t use the BM in my universal player unless I set everything to large or go through an extra A/D-D/A, which amazes me since Outlaw kind of pioneered the whole analog bass management thing in their other products.. At a minimum I’d like to be able to easily switch speaker sizes front the front panel like on the 950. Better yet a couple of discrete remote codes would do the trick.

amen!
my previous AVR that I was using as a pre-pro did it. with the push of one button, 2-channel bliss set to large and no sub. to me, subs add something artificial to music. guess i got used to something and i'll just have to get used to not having it. mostly likely i'll be putting my 2-channel rig to a little more use

i'm not sure i will even do the firmware upgrade.. seems like very few upgrades to be had.. and used actually.

Can anyone confirm that current firmware with fronts set to large and sub set to l/r+lfe that the l/r did not get through, and the new firmware fixed this? My question relates to getting the proper sub signal when using vhs tapes (prologic) going into one of the analog inputs.

Also, has anyone had success with a "matrixed" DTS 6.1 going into the 7.1 analog inputs, or through coax?

One interesting finding with the new firmware: the 7.1 Direct input cannot be renamed. Also, I am not certain of this but I think that the menu display stays up a bit longer than before, giving the user more time to make any changes.

I'm not sure about the first item, but you might be interested in looking at the analog and digital bass management matrix that Outlaw posted along with the firmware update.

As for the second item, I'm game to do some experimenting, but I'm not sure what the question is. A DTS 5.1 soundtrack routed to the 7.1 analog input is purely 5.1, with no processing possible. A DTS 5.1 track delivered through digital coax can get straight DTS processing, DTS+PLIIx processing, or DTS+NEO:6 processing applied. DTS-ES is restricted to discrete DTS-ES soundtracks; the former DTS-ES Matrix mode has been officially phased out by DTS in lieu of DTS+NEO:6 (a case of semantics alone, since DTS-ES Matrix always used the NEO:6 matrix processing to get a surround back signal).

Who?

Thanks Gonk. Scratch the analog thing. I wasn't thinking when I wrote that. My question concerning 6.1 was directed at DTS-ES. Forgive my ignorance, but I thought there were some dvd soundtracks (i.e. Lord of the Rings and Star Wars 1) that were recorded with 6.1, and dvd players that could encode to DTS-ES would matrix the 6th channel into channels 4&5, as opposed to a matrixed stereo output. Is this correct? If so, would the 990 auto detect this or is this really NEO:6. I thought NEO:6 was a 2-channel signal only, with other channels matrixed within. That would appear to be more bandwidth limited.