Interesting to see that kgt is using two amps as well.

My cable box (Comcast SA8300HD) is going right to the 990. It's either optical or coax, don't remember off the top of my head.

Funny that you mention the balanced cables - I'm using balanced on the front 3 channels but unbalanced in the rear. This 'pop' is annoying, but it's not worth buying 3 new cables at this point.

Anyone running balanced cables and not experiencing any pop?

Cheers

Edit: I suppose the easy thing to do to test this would be to swap out the balanced cables in the front with the unbalanced cables in the rear...just a matter of me wanting to go back in that zoo of wires that I have.