I made a post few days ago about 990 being too harsh to my tastes with my Paradigm 100s. I was comparing the sound in Stereo (990s DACs) and Bypass (Wolfson WM8740 DACs of my Cambridge Azur CD player) and the sound is distinctively different - 990 is much brighter sounding when the Azur is more smooth and laid back. I think (at least that's how I hear it) that the 990s DACs have somehow subdued sound in mid-lows (around 500-100 Hz), and that makes the sound a little skewed to high frequencies (3KHz and up). When trying to play louder, it makes it hard to listen as SPLs at these frequencies are too high comparing to mid-low range. At low range it picks up again, but to me the overal soundstage is not smooth - there is a gap in levels between mids and low end. Again - that's what I hear. Maybe my ears are weird On the other hand, the Azur does not have this effect.

Anyway, here is the deal. I hooked H/K 635 yesterday evening to the 7700 amp (of course made the settings similar to the 990 and calibrated) to see if I can live with it and return the 990. The short answer is - no. Here goes the long answer.
The 635 does sound somehow smoother. The overall soundstage is much more balanced, with lows, mid-lows, mid-highs and highs playing with about the same perceived levels. No overloaded mid-highs and subdued mid-lows. For example the vocals are extended lower comparing to the 990, female singing sounds fuller.
So can 635 compare to the 990? Not really. The sound of 635 is not as clean. Comparing to 990 it's kind of veiled and muddy. Subtle details in music, which 990 resolves effortlessly, get lost with 635. The biggest problem is in the low end - it's not just muddy, it's mud itself. The 990 is very detailed in the lows, for example listenning to bass guitar is a pleasure. With 635 it's even hard to follow the bass guitar as it's becoming some indistinct rumble. Also, the 990 goes a lot lower without losing the clarity of bass. I can actually hear the subwoofer play note by note with 990, when with 635 is more like just some muddled low-frequency effects.

Conclusions of Part 1. I wish the 990 had a more even soundstage without losing the details. 635 goes to eBay. I went to a local store and picked up an Arcam AVP700 on loan. It's sitting on the floor ready to be hooked and calibrated. I will spend today and tomorrow listening to it and the 990. I will not be able to do a blind test or any kind of scientific comparison, but it's not my goal anyway. I'll just pick one that will give me more enjoyment with music. I'll let you know how it goes.

Let me just say I know what you're talking about. I have Paradigm Active 40's (which are self amplified Studio 40's) so my speakers are similar to yours. Same tweeter, anyway.

When I first got the 990 I also thought 'man this thing is much brighter than my old Onkyo receiver'.

But the more I listed, the more I realized something...it's not 'brighter'...it's cleaner. It's more revealing. Nothing is masked. Subtle things like the vocalists breath and the skins of the drum could now be heard. But on the flip side, it really revealed how crappy the sound on DirecTV is!

I've always felt that Paradigms are on the bright side in the first place, so I'm eager to hear your findings on the Arcam. How much does that Arcam cost, anyway?

Well, here goes part two. Again, the short story - 990 flies back to Outlaws as fast as possible, Arcam loaner goes back to the shop until I decide if I can part with another grand, H/K 635 is back in the rack until then.

Here is the long story.
The two units sound apparently (and appallingly) different. Comparing to the Arcam, the 990 is just weird. I discovered that it colors the sound is so many unexpected ways it's unbelievable. Yes, the harshness - comparing to Arcam it seems like there is a boost of mid-high frequencies and up. But that's not all. The low end is screwed up too. Sometimes there is bass coming out from the 990 that should not be nearly as heavy. The biggest problem is that this bass is not right. It's "cheap" bass, bulging someplace around 80-60Hz and not extending much deeper. For example the beginning of the Diana Krall DVD where a double-bass (is it the right name? contrabass?) is playing was so unnatural with 990 it was almost unbearable to listen. With the Arcam is was very natural and went so deep something rattled on the shelf.

The Arcam sounds very neutral with no colorization of any kind. Not harsh or bright at all. Extremely clean and detailed. It’s so silky and smooth with music, you just want to keep listening. With the 990 it was hardly possible.

There are few bad things too. Some clicks and pops. Only one global crossover (I think unacceptable on a dedicated pre/pro costing over $2K.) Some usability issues (for example all sound modes have to be cycled through with a single button.) I does sound a little too thin on recordings where there is no good bass recorded (Uriah Heep Magician's Birthday comes to mind), but just excellent on recording with good bass (Diana Krall DVD for example.) With the Outlaw it's actually (and sadly) the opposite.

Strangely the surround decoding works very differently on the Arcam too. It creates wider and more spacious soundstage, which kind of encircles you. But the H/K 635 decoding is more similar to 990, so I'm not sure what exactly the Arcam guys did and how true is it to Dolby standard. For example - running phase calibration from the Avia DVD between left front and left rear turned to be impossible as the Arcam mixes sound in such a way that the phase changes between these two channels are alsmost indistinguishable. Strange.

Anyway, the conclusion is that comparing to the AVP700, the 990 sounds like a very high quality boombox. Keeping the tradition with all other boomboxes, it boosts some frequencies so that the percieved sound may appeal better to some. It does it exceptionally well though, the boosting. Very clean, no boominess, just a little harshness. But the sound that comes out of it is very inaccurate and is very far from the original recording. For home theater it is pretty good (lot more boom on explosions), but for music – forget it.

The material listened (tried to make it different):
Diana Krall Live in Paris DVD
Tori Amos Fade to Red DVD
Steve Hackett Somewhere in South America DVD
Bjork Cambridge DVD
Procol Harum Live at the Union Chapel DVD
John Wetton Amorata DVD
Genesis Selling Englan by the Pound CD (mostly Firth of Fith)
Kate Bush The Kick Inside CD
Uriah Heep Magician's Birthday CD
Mike Oldfield Amarok CD
Roger Waters Amused to Death CD
Van Der Graaf Generator Godbluff CD
Eloy Ocean CD
Suzeanne Vega CD
Yes Relayer CD
King Crimson Lizard CD

On neither of the material I even remotely preferred the 990. Arcam sounded better on every recording.

The story continues – I took the 990 out of the rack forever and put the H/K 635 back. So I played a little with H/K and Arcam. Arcam does sound cleaner, but I noticed that on some older CDs it produced more hiss, so I set the Treble on the H/K to +4dB and made the highs practically identical. Now H/K sounds as detailed (well, almost) as the Arcam. Good thing is it still is not nearly as harsh as the 990. The mid-low bass on the H/K may sound a little better than on the Arcam, there is somehow more of it but its cleanness is questionable and it’s a little boomy. The deep bass on the Arcam is much better and, well, deeper. In the previous post I wrote that H/K bass was muddy. I don’t think it’s true anymore. It’s just the 990’s bass was so exaggerated that comparing to it the 635’s bass sounded less defined. Arcam is more similar to the H/K with the bass, just does resolve it better.

Overall – I can live with the H/K until Arcam guys clean up some bugs with their pre/pro and maybe release an updated model. If not these little annoyances I’d buy it tomorrow as to me its sound quality is worth the extra grand.
I definitely could not live with the 990.

Could this be the bass-boost-except-in-Bypass problem that so many others have noticed?

I don't know. I could not figure out what was happening. I tried different conigurations - small mains with a sub crossed at various frequencies, large fronts with a sub, large fronts without a sub, all lagre without a sub, all with different processing modes. All configurations yielded bulged exaggerated bass. Of course nothing could cure the harshness either.

It's possible that many people will actually like this kind of bass exaggeration for movies. I tried some movie DVDs, and the 990 had more what some would call "involving" sound. The special effects appeared more exciting. The Arcam was colder with movies, but I think more natural too. For example the 990 would render a simple door slam with a reassuring subwoofer thump (try slamming a door at your house, do you really hear a lot of bass?) The Arcam would make a door slam just that - a [boring] door slam.

Read the review of the 990/7125 in "The Absolute Sound", June/July 2006, Issue 162, by Neal Gader.
As yet, no comments from "The Outlaws"!

Is this not the week that the 990 firmware upgrade is supposed to come down the pike? I hope!

Yep, Scott said a week ago that barring disaster it'd arrive within two weeks.

I wonder what effects the new firmware will have. I bet it will have nothing to do with harshness anyway. In any case I'm not going to be able to test it unless it will be released tomorrow as my trial expires in two days. I have to return the Arcam tomorrow too.

DaveR: Can you post the Gader's review or maybe a short summary? I don't have a subscription and don't feel like spending $10 for one review article.

Wait a sec...let's back up.

Maybe you skipped over something but here's what I'm reading.

You are connecting your Azur via analog cables (otherwise you wouldn't be using the Azur DAC's).

Now from what you typed you are switching between internal DAC's (Outlaw) and external DAC's (Azur) by simply pressing the stereo button and alternating between stereo and bypass? Is that correct?

If so, you just made a huge mistake as that's not what's happening. If that's what you did then you never heard the Outlaw DAC's and any sound you did not like was in fact coming from the Azur.

Stereo mode routes the signal through the Outlaw's DSP.

Bypass bypasses the DSP and turns the video signal off.

I really hope this is not what you did. If it is, the sound you liked the best was coming from....the 990 because of it's excellent bypass mode which passes on a pure signal.

Of cousrse it's not what I did I just didn't get into switching details when I wrote it. In relality I had CD input set to Analog/Bypass and AUX input set to Coax1/Bypass (Coax coming from the player of course) and was switching between the inputs.

Another little detail I remember (forgot to write before) - I was trying Renaissanse Novella CD, and on the beginning of The Sisters track it was very clear that the Annie Haslam voice was overpowering everything with the 990, thus making the whole scene harsh. The Azur brought the piano, synthesizer and the guitar more to the front so everything became nice and smooth. The effect of this difference was quite amazing.

As far as I remember the low end sounded quite different with Azur too, but I was concentrating on the harshness at the time and ignored it.

Okay, just making sure. Thanks for clearing that up!

I also preferred the sound of the DAC's in my Marantz DV-6400 for CD sound, but the difference was not huge. It's not a big enough difference to where I would miss the 6400 if it were to blow up all of a sudden, I would be happy either way.

Actually, in bypass mode the 990 bypasses the DSP, so calling it "excellent" is perhaps misleading. If asx is connecting via analog, then in bypass mode the sonic character is coming from the Azur. In addition, in Stereo mode the outlaw's DACs are, in fact being used - in order for a DSP to process the digital signal, the signal must go A/D preprocess and D/A postprocess.

I will say this - IMHO it's kind of pointless to send a stereo signal through the 990 any other way than bypass, since you're adding (for an analog connection) not only two more DAC passes but also signal processing - a recipe for coloration. Note that the 990 manual itself says that Bypass will produce a cleaner sound than stereo mode.

I guess I called the bypass mode excellent because it is so transparent, which it should be.

I'm liking the 'upsampling' setting for CD's as well. Adds a nice bit of warmth to the sound.

I still have the 990 but returned the Arcam (thinking of buying it later.) The guy at the store offered me to try something else, so I picked Cary Cinema 6 pre/pro. Listening to it right now and comparing to the 990.

Same results. Cary is smooth, the bass is even and deep, no harshness at all. Although I cannot compare them side by side, I think Cary is very similar to the AVP700 as I'm enjoying the music just as much. Outlaw is harsh as usual, bass is bulged up and not deep, pretty much hopeless with music.

Disclaimer: yes I am aware of the price difference.

Asx,
Thanks for the helpful info.

Make sure you set Tone Defeat on. Per Outlaw support, setting it to ON bypasses the DSP, when playing a CD through a digital source. In addition, I think he said there is a bug that messes up Bypass mode with tone defeat=off (even if Bass and Treble are set to 0) with a digital source -- that will be fixed in the upcoming firmware.

Asx,
You say that the 990 is harsh as usual, bass is bulged up and not deep, pretty much hopeless with music. How come I don't hear this kind of bashing from most of the owners of this unit? I would venture to say that over 90% of the owners are very happy with their units.
I don't understand why you still have the 990. If I was that unhappy with it, I would have returned it a long time ago. Buy the Cary and go in peace...

Asx's feedback is different from the norm, but I commend him for putting in the time to swap out equipment to find the best unit for his needs. I keep trying to think of what variable in the 990 equation might be off to produce the disappointing performance that he's reporting, because it does seem unusual. So far I haven't seen anything obvious. Odd bass management settings can easily yield very disappointing results, but Asx clearly has a good handle on how to set up a surround processor and should therefore not be doing anything so severely out of whack. I wish I could suggest something that would yield the very pleasing performance that I'm getting from my 990...

How do I access the Set Tone Defeat=ON?
I'm not seeing it in the menu!

I too wonder if something is wrong with asx's 990.
i also compared the 990 to the arcam 700 ,as well as an anthem 30. I agree the arcam is very good but to me not worth the additional money. Possibly this is because i use my 990 for mostly movies.
What i really wanted was the Krell, but that will have to wait until i win that lottery.
The snobby salesmen at my local arcam dealer also helped me to lean towards the 990.
I think the clincher was when i saw a 3 year old outlaw 950 go for $100 dollars less than the fellow paid for it new on ebay, gotta love that transferable warrenty to keep the resale value high.

Asx - TommyBoy,
For the last couple of day's i have been wandering what 990 Asx was using. I have been playin 2 channel jazz and classical (mostly Telarc and Grammaphone recording) and have not noticed what Asx was describing.
I figured I have heard enough equipment to surely hear what Asx was describing (Dahlquist, Magnepan, Mark levinson, CJ, Krell, Rotel, Adcom, Snell, Axiom, Aperion, PSB, B&W, etc.).

So i started playing. On the 990 - first i killed (setup=none) the sub. Set the paradigm ref60v3's to large. Set 2ch = 0
music, music .... bass mmm.?!?!? I wanted something extended but not movie fake.
i thru in a jazz funk band named FOUR80East (Nocturnal) in the player(hooked up via rca digital into the 990).
I spun cut #5 and set it to A-B repeat on just the first 30-40 sec.

I have always had the Tone Defeat=On. So i listened to Bypass and Upsampling. Good as always.
Then i turned Tone Defeat = Off.
I was expecting no real change. I mean nothing really noticeable. But sure enough - the bass was exaggerated and i can see where 'muddy' could be used as a description.
And the image seemed cut down and subdued. The drums/cymbals where compressed in. where’s the image?
I flipped the Tone Defeat = On: The imaged opened up and the bass settled down. crazy – no?!?!?!

This is my 2 cents worth……..

Cappra: Play something in stereo or upsampling. On the 990 unit, push ‘tone’. If it is =on – then that should pop up (Tone Defeat = on). Other wise you should see bass. Push ‘Tone’ button until you see Tone Defeat. Push the up/down key. ‘On’ should replace ‘Off’. You are good to go.
.

tmdlp,
Thanks for the help! Using the tone defeat=on made the volume level the same for stereo, bypass and upsampling. Bypass sounds much better!

tempdlp,
Good catch.
Stereo, Bypass, and Upsample ALL have the same volume and sound beautiful!
No wonder I was griping last week. This 990 is 10x better now. Excellent sound.

In case you miss the edit I put in my post above, I will put it here too:
Make sure you set Tone Defeat on. Per Outlaw support, setting it to ON bypasses the DSP, when playing a CD through a digital source. In addition, I think he said there is a bug that messes up Bypass mode with tone defeat=off (even if Bass and Treble are set to 0) with a digital source -- that will be fixed in the upcoming firmware.

Just checked my Tone Defeat setting and it was ON. I do not recall setttng the parameter, but I have never experienced the problems Asx described, nor the level changes others have described. Just lucky I guess.

How many people have compared the 990 with something like AVP700 or Cary side by side in their own setups, not just listened to them in some showrooms? I tell you, when I first heard the 990 I was pretty happy too, coming from H/K AVR635 (H/K AVR8000 before that which I reluctantly had to sell.) It's only by the end of the trial period I concluded that something was not right. Maybe you too should find a local shop and arrange an Arcam loaner just for the sake of experimenting. You may be quite surprised.

Why do I still have it? - I guess I still want to figure out what's going on and don't want to spend that much extra money on Arcam or Cary or something else if I really don't need to. Btw, I extended my trial period with Outlaws so I can try out the new firmware and then decide.

Just curious, did you do the comparison in your house, with you own speakers, all units together? I heard the Cary yesterday in the showroom (before I took it home, which I never even intended to do as I never heard of the company) and was not much impressed - was kind of nice but nothing special. It's only when I brought it home I discovered what it really can do with music (hint: it's better than the Arcam). But I agree that with movies 990 is fine. On the other hand my H/K 635 with movies is just as fine.

Hm, interesting. I had to leave for the rest of the evening yesterday so never had a chance to try. I'll do it today. But the symptoms you are describing are very similar, including the compression and shrank soundstage.
I wonder if only this particular Tone routine or every mode of the DSP colors the sound. For example would having DPLII engaged but the Tone defeat ON result in the same colorization? I'm guilty of using DPLII with music sometimes on certain material (try Mike Oldfield Amarok for example) and would not want to lose this option. On both Arcam and Cary the DPLII with music was wonderful without changing anything in the sound spectrum. Also, what about straight DD or DTS tracks? They go through DSP too, and I found DTS music to be as bad as Stereo in terms of harshness and bass colorization.

Anyway, I'll try today when I get home.

It's me again I run home for lunch as an excuse to quickly try the Tone Defeat trick. Well, it's definetely a bug in the software and there is a noticeable difference between Stereo and Bypass when it's on or off.

There are some other news. I really did not have enough time to try everything yesterday evening, but I did something. When I talked to Steve he told me how to avoid the bass bug. I'm not sure if it's the only way, but that's what did it for me - reset the processor (with the unit in standby, hold together Set and Menu buttons on the front of the unit, it will erase everything including you input assignments). Then set the x-overs, distances, levels normally, but leave the fronts to Small and do not touch the Subwoofer setting in the Speaker Size menu. So I did this yesterday night but didn't have time to really try it (also was so enjoying the Cary that it kind of Carried me away for a while

Anyway, when I quickly tried the now reset and tunedefeated 990 and the Cary during lunch time, I got somehow surprised that I did not hear that much of a difference anymore, at least in the bass department. There is some, but it can be easily contributed to variations in subwoofer calibration levels. Granted I had time to listen only to Genesis Selling England..., Frith of Fith track (good for bass but not for harshness testing) so I never concentrated on the harshness. I'll do that part of testing tonight with some female vocals. So - if somebody is still concerned about bass, reset the darn thing, don't touch the sub setting, and see if you hear the difference.

Hello again, Asx. Thanks for the feedback - you're turning up some interesting stuff. Hopefully it'll help both you and others in both system setup and in deciding the processor that is the best fit to your needs.

OK, I think we figured out what was going on... at least to some extent.

Good news are that all weirdness that I described above was caused by the Tone Defeat and the extra bass (cured by the reset.) It is very easy to repeat. Play a CD via digital conection (choose something with well defined deep bass, or something with female voice and piano), choose Stereo, and then start switching the Tone Defeat ON and OFF on the remote. As soon as the Defeat is turned off, the midbass is bumped up, the low bass disappears, the midrange (piano) is getting subdued, and the harshness is there. The soundstage shrinks considerably too. Turn the Defeat on and the soundstage expands, bass is getting smoother and lower, and the harshness is gone. I wrote above about Renaissanse Novella CD - now with the Tone Defeat ON, switching between the Azur player (analog bypass) and the 990's DACs virtually does not cnange/color the sound. But if I set Tone Defeat to off, the piano steps backs and the voice gets harsher. Wow!

Here are maybe not so good news. I listened again to Diana Krall, Procol Harum, Bjork, Steve Hackett, Tori Amos DVDs in DD and DTS, and comparing to Cary they still sound different. Soundstage seems more narrow, and the timbre is different and it seems harsher too. DPLII Music also seems to bring the harshness, and the Tone Defeat has no effect if either mode of DD or DST is selected. Try playing with the Tone Defeat in Stereo until you understand what effect it brings, then leave in ON and start switching between Stereo and DPLII Music - I bet you'll hear scary similarities.

So it looks like the DSP processing on the 990 is not quite up to... well, at least my expectations. I hope some DSP (not just system) code will be updated with the firmware release, but I'm not holding my breath.

Asx,
Suggestion:
Here is the reason that you might be hearing a difference in DPII:
By default, the Music PLIIx on the 990 sounds un-musical because of the defaults. On my system, 90% of the sound "seems" to come out of the center channel in Music PLIIx, with the defaults. So you might be comparing L/R speakers (full-range) on your Cary to the C speaker (not full-range) on the 990. L/R speakers will obviously sound much fuller.
Try this: The Center Channel width setting on the 990 defaults to 0. The manual says to start at 3 and go from there. I have noticed, in Music PLIIx the higher the width the better because all of the sound is not going to the center speaker anymore.
The manual is correct. The default is not. The center width is a very nice feature on the 990! 0 should not be the default...

Here is my un-official chart (joke):

Center width
------------
0 bad (default)
3 good (recommended starting point in manual)
~4-6 excellent

************
Changing the subject: Why does the center width setting have no effect on **Movie** PLIIx? In other words, it works in Music PLIIx but not Movie PLIIx? Too much sound out of just the center, with no control for Movie PLIIx?

Staying on the changed subject: I believe that the center width setting is disabled in Movie mode to make sure that dialog stays well anchored to the center channel and not overly spread out to the left and right channels. If you go back to the days of Pro Logic, music performed very poorly because it all collapsed to the center. Pro Logic II created separate music and movie modes primarily to deal with that issue.

TommyBoy: I think I set the Width to 2, but don't remember rigth now. I also didn't like the default 0.
I'm still concerned that anything that hits the DSP will result in distorted spectrum and imaging. Try playing with the ToneDefeat on/off in stereo, note what it does, and then compare to what happens between stereo and DPLII. I think it is the same effect, but I'd like to hear different opinions. If I'm right it would mean that all surround modes, including DD and DTS and even DD 2.0, have distorted sound.