Hi all,
I have a 990/7125 combo. Sources are a Toshiba HD-A1 via digital coaxial and a Dish 811 reciever via optical. Speakers are all Swans Divas (5.1, C3, R3's). I have auto calibrated the unit 3 times, each time it works perfectly. I have to crank up both sources to about 0db to get what would be considered reference volumes. This is not blow you out of theater volume, just nice, loud, engaging volume. I have done a search for "volume" and only found 1 thread where front panel db's were discussed, seems most are in agreement in that thread that normal db's on the front panel run somewhere in the -20's for normal, to slightly above normal levels of volume.

The sound I'm getting is clean and free of noise, but some of the low mastered HD-DVD's from Warner require me to crank the volume up to the max setting and it still does not seem loud enough.

Any suggestions would be appreciated...

Well, for one thing, the Warner HD-DVD's are improperly mastered on the audio side - I've seen several reviews warning that the audio is at significantly lower levels than DVD's or Universal HD-DVD's.

Technically, 0dB on the 990 is reference level - that's the level that folks calibrate it to in order to achieve the same volume level used when the soundtracks were originally mixed. Reference level is generally very loud, which makes me suspect you're not quite getting to true reference level at 0dB. What are the channel calibration settings produced by the auto calibration? Are they near 0dB (plus or minus a few dB), or are they consistently negative values across the board? While I'm rattling off questions, do you have an SPL meter so that you can manually run some test tones and determine what levels you are getting? Also, how big is your room?

gonk,
The channel calibrations, during the test tones themselves, show +5 to +7db or so, once the tones stop, most of the front levels are right at 0db or -1 or so, the rears seem to get knocked down to -5 to -7 or so, same with the two subs. I would have to say the 0db while watching a movie is pretty loud, so maybe all is well.

Room is 16 wide by 18'8" deep. Twin SVS plus/2's for LFE (yeah, it's overkill) I do have a rat shack db meter. I have yet to do any Avia or DVE, thought I would ask the experts first.

If I correctly remember a post from Scott recently, the information displayed during auto setup shows how much above or below reference the channels are. That means that a "+5dB" reading would require a "-5dB" adjustment to achieve reference level, which matches with the -5 and -7 settings you mention.

I'd suggest two options. One option is to use the 990's internal test tones and your meter to check out the channel calibration settings by setting the 990's volume to 0dB and going into the channel calibration menu. That will let you double-check the auto setup. Another option is to simply adjust all of the channel calibration settings (except perhaps the subs, which I tend to adjust by tinkering anyway) by the same amount (perhaps increasing each channel by 5dB so that the surrounds are near a 0dB trim setting).

Gonk, You remember correctly. I was struck by Scott's post, as I had believed that the levels displayed during Auto Setup were the levels set for each speaker. I did an auto setup and verified that + levels displayed during setup were reduced by - levels. I have not looked at the manual, but this info should be there, or maybe everyone else understood, and I did not.