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.....