I am concidering getting a 990. Question is when getting an Amp what it the advantage of the balanced connection and do I need it. The Pre and Amp will be right next to each other?

From what I've heard the main advantage of balanced connections is hum rejection for long cable runs in electrically noisy environments. Since your preamp and amp will be next to each other, unbalanced connections should work fine for you. Gonk could probably spell this out more clearly. Enjoy your 990 and amps.

Is the balanced input the only advantage of the 7700 over the 7500 amp. I can save $550 going to the 7500, not to mension the $200 worth of balanced cables

Over long runs or in tight spaces with high levels of EM or RF interference, recommending balanced connections is a pretty simple argument. In the average home environment and over the short distances involved in most people's equipment racks, you end up with a sometimes heated debate. The signal rejection benefits of balanced connections shouldn't really be a factor over those distances, and I've seen one argument (made by a very knowledgeable individual) that in those cases a balanced connection could actually be worse than unbalanced - it ends up being related to the manipulations required to achieve a balanced output. In my experience, using balanced connections has not hurt, and it does offer a more secure cable connection than even locking RCA's. Aside from that locking connection, however (which is part of the reason I stayed with balanced when upgrading my amp recently), I can't say whether there's actual real benefit to a balanced connection.

The difference between 7700 and 7200 is essentially just the balanced design, which affects the topography of the seven amp channels. The difference between the 7700 and the 7500 is that the 7700 has seven balanced channels and the 7500 has five balanced channels.

Oh, and while I currently still have a set of Outlaw PCB cables between my 990 and my 7500, I initially used a set of five microphone cables ($5 each) and they worked just as well. I would have left them, but the ones I had were too long (got in the way of everything else) and the connectors were not as smooth as the PCB connectors (one of them really wanted to stick in place).

The above is true. Balanced connections are used for AV for that reason.

Also, as scott would say, you could use mono blocks and have the amps as close to speakers as possible.

Or, the amps are quieter.

Either way its better, but for a host of reasons.

There is some trickery used in some balanced applications to save money, but not here.

There are more detailed explainations available that I am sure will follow.

I checked with few sources and was convinced that that I was going with 5.1 than 7.1, and since I was buying less speakers, why not increase the quality of the amp from the 7125 to the 7500.

A very credible source told me its better depending on your room design to have a better 5.1 than a 7.1.

I was set to hand speakers everywhere but was talked out of it.

In fact, In my playroom, I bought down my 7.1 to 5.1 and it sounds much better! To much conflicting sounds.

Speak to a good sound engineer and they will tell you the truth!

But again, it depends on the size of the room, sitting position, and width of room design.

Its all good any way you go.

The balanced outputs from my 990 to my Crown amps made a big difference. I had to make a RCA to balanced cable to feed the amps from my 1050. I had hum on my rear channels and center channel. I also was picking up the electronic dog collar on the center channel!!! All the unwanted noise is gone now. I think the balanced cables made a big difference. Jim

Balanced cables caused hum to vaporize between 990 and 7700. So I was picking up something....and from somewhere

I'm planning on getting a 990, and I'm going to be using Crown amps as well...

Since the connection is balanced, is the signal matched for pro amps (+12db)? Because balanced connections are usually reserved for pro devices, no?...

Thanks for all the input. Guess I would go the balanced route just to be safe and not have to worry about it. I was almost ready to pull the trigger on a 990 and 7700 but just put the brakes on. I ordered a new board to try and fix my Yamaha V2400 first, if I can get that going I think it is best to wait and see where HDMI 1.3 ends up so I don't have to buy again in 6 months. If I can't get the V2400 going again then I just don't know.....

If you can't resurrect the 2400, let us know. We may be able to help give you some food for thought that would help with the decision making process. With HDMI v1.3 in the mix, it can be a complex issue, but there are a few perspectives on the issue that can take a few kinks out of the situation. For example, moving to separates now (Outlaw, Emotiva, or other) would still give you a good amp and processor now, and the amp can hang around for multiple generations of surround processor. Even with HDMI v1.3 standard now in place, I don't think we'll see entry-level surround processors on the market that offer HDMI for at least twelve to eighteen more months. When the time comes that HDMI processors start to show up at less painful prices, you could potentially sell your processor to help purchase a new one - assuming that the rest of your system presents a need for HDMI v1.x support.

I glanced briefly at your AV123 thread and had another thought... You might want to take a few minutes to peruse my HDMI FAQ . It is intended to serve as a fairly complete single-point source of information about HDMI's various forms without getting too in depth with the technology. Basically, there are several scenarios with HDMI audio and the new HD optical disc formats (HD-DVD and Blu-ray): carry the new audio formats (Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD, and DTS-HD) over HDMI as multichannel PCM (decoded by the player but left in the digital domain), carry the new audio formats in their native bitstreams for decoding by the receiver or processor, decode the new audio formats and convert them to analog in the player, or decode the new audio formats and convert them to either high-bitrate DTS or high-bitrate Dolby Digital for output over SPDIF (coaxial or optical digital audio). Which of those four actually takes place depends on entirely too many factors (not the least of which is which formats are actually supported by the player). Many people have assumed that HDMI v1.3 was the holy grail and that once it was here we would go back to the old familiar bitstream output - feed the new formats in their native data form to the receiver or processor over HDMI instead of SPDIF. In reality, we may still need the player to decode to multichannel PCM in order to support bonus material or other player features. The most recent information I've seen suggested that HD-DVD's may actually continue to force internal decoding for a while in order to allow things like player-generated sound effects during menu navigation. That multichannel PCM is supported by HDMI v1.1, which would have probably appeared in products much sooner if v1.3 hadn't been looming on the horizon. Overall, it's just plain messy...

Thanks you for the FAQ, lots of good info their. My biggest and main use is for movies. I don't want to get caught in a situation where after getting into HD DVD's that I have to live with converting the Dolby HD down to Dolby Digital and listen to it that way.

I think I will hold out a little while. Sounds like 1.3 is the ticket if everyone can agree and just do it and stop changing formats, that hurts everyone. HD-DVD and Blue Ray are going to have to merge also, you would think they would learn from the Beta vrs VHS days. I hope it all stragihten out fast so us consumers can get some killer quality sound and picture out of our DVD players.

On a side note, would I gain any quality using the HDMI to DVI on my TV versus using the component that I am using now? I have HD channels.

If you can revive the V2400, holding out is an approach that is mighty hard to argue against. If you can't, there are a number of options for getting the system back to life - and even allow some opportunities for dabbling with the HD formats while we all wait for the industry to get itself sorted out.

Using HDMI/DVI in place of component can help in some cases, but it's not always going to be an upgrade. I didn't find DVI to be any better than component with my HD cable box (a Pace Micro DC-550), and in fact component might have a slight edge - although my display is also an analog device (CRT direct view) unlike the more common digital devices (LCD, DLP, LCoS). There are a number of DVD players that do offer excellent upscaling performance with DVI/HDMI, even without considering the HD-DVD and Blu-ray players that are generally best when used with HDMI output.

Should be just fine, but others who've actually tried it can comment. I have not, but do have experience with interfacing consumer and pro gear going back about 10 years.

Nominal output level of the 990 is 1V for a 1kohm input impedance at the amp. Max of 9V line-level output.

Where you might run into trouble is if you mix brands/makes of power amp with the 990. Then level-matching becomes more tricky.