The long lamented 950 lock-on issue is starting to get to my wife. It has been the most pressing issue with this unit that I have had for a while now and am otherwise extemely happy with.

I blame Directv/Samsung and their continual dropouts from my receiver, but it really gets to the wife as she wathces alot of network broadcast TV, and that seems to be the worst culprit. Everytime we get the least bit of interference the audio drops and it can take up to a few seconds to re-acquire.

I'm pretty sure this was covered when the 990 was first released buy I just haven't looked through all the threads yet. Can anyone tell me if the lock on issue was addressed with the 990? She's complaining and I'm taking that as an opportunity to upgrade

Definitely no problems with my 990 and DirecTV. Are you connected analog or digital? If digital, connect it analog and the dropouts will stop...or get a new DirecTV box

The 990's lock-on time is much, much faster. With the 950, I actually elected to not use the digital input from my cable box because my wife (who I consider an excellent test for signal acquisition time) went nuts while channel surfing. With the 990, I set it up initially with a digital input and she didn't even notice. There's still a brief delay due to the box itself acquiring new channels, but that was a problem to a similar degree with the analog audio output.

The lock-on time for the 990 is still slower than my old Yamaha receiver. This is the one thing that bugs me about the 990. Before I bought the 990 I read a review on an Adcom Pre/Pro and the reviewer complained about the time it took to lock-on to the digital signal. The Adcom cost over twice as much so I went with the 990. Changing channels when watching DirecTV doesn’t bother me too much. With a channel that is broadcasting just a stereo signal, the delay is not noticeable at all. It is more noticeable with a channel that is broadcasting Dolby Digital. Playing a CD is what bugs me most. I always miss the first couple notes of the first song. Using the analog connection fixes that but I would rather use the DAC in the 990.

That is exactly what I'm talking about Daryl. Same thing happens to my CD's and with DVD's in when menus come up or if I'm changing chapters manually. It's not just limited to satellite (and my wife also prefered the lock on of our old Pioneer receiver..."lightning fast, I liked it better" ).

So it sounds like your experience with the 990 is similar to the 950 lock-on. Yet Gonk says it's much improved. What do you think fellas? Is this just a matter of perception or is there a real issue with the 990?

The 950's delay was probably 4 times longer than the 990's - it was a major issue for many people. The 990 is much improved from the 950. I still notice the delay from time to time, but it's slight (maybe a quarter second - hard to measure?).

The delay I get with DirecTV and DVD doesn’t bother me at all. The only time I do notice it is when I play a CD and use the digital connection between the player and the 990. Even then I don’t notice it on some CDs. I think some CDs start to send an audio signal a fraction of a second before the first note is played. In that case I don’t miss a thing. With some I miss the first couple notes. Right now I am using the analog connection from the CD player to eliminate this and it sounds great.

Thanks for the input fellas. We seem to have an agreement and "much improved" is plenty good enough for me. I'm sure the wife will be happy with any improvement at all.