Well that is one perspective. I disagree though, due to the fact that the issue was originally raised in April and there has been next to nothing from Outlaw as far as a response. If they were working on something, why not say so?

I'm proud to own a Outlaw 990!!!!
Enough said!!!!!

Clearly, they are working on something, because at least one forum member has been sent a copy of the new firmware. As for why they aren't talking about it, I think that can be traced to two things: their policy of minimal forum presence (after almost seven years, Scott has less than 500 posts, and Peter waited at least five years before even registering an account), and a policy of being tight-lipped about product updates in general as a sort of residual scar tissue from the Model 950 development (when they were a bit too open about projected delivery dates and got roasted on a spit in numerous online forums when the product ran into numerous delays).

this is reassuring :-)

What now? Wait for another year or two?
The 990 was last product which I purchased from them!
I spend few days on measuring this thing and it has no bypass mode at all!
Everything is going trough the A/D then D/A.
Regards
Kris

I've had my 990 since the beginning and always use its full digital processing with all sources, at least to split and balance with my sub properly. That and none of my sources are so great that the 990 is ever the weakest link. I do find it very amusing that I have read a couple of "professional" reviews of the 990 where the reviewers preferred the clean transparent sound of BYPASS mode compared with STEREO or even UPSAMPLE. Now we find out that BYPASS doesn't bypass! So much for their fancy review equipment and experienced golden ears!

I was under the impression that if your mains were set to large, and stereo mode set to bypass, no A/D/A occurred. Is this not correct? What tests can be run to prove this?

Hi jrlouie,

I believe that the problem is with mains being set to "small". The analog BM matrix shows that in all cases, setting the device to "Bypass" should allow no filtering at all. It seems to work correctly when mains are set to "Large" but not when they are set to "Small". The fact that the filtering does NOT follow the crossover point is concerning, as it doesn't appear to simply be an overlooked issue of applying BM, but some other weird bug.

I started this thread, but sold my 990 some time ago after not getting a fix (I really can't believe that there's still not a fix for this -- it's either fixable in firmware or it's not; if yes, it shouldn't be that hard of a fix). Anyway, on the first page of this thread there is a post by me, linking to the HomeTheaterShack in which I performed a number of measurements that prove that this is a problem. I can't prove that there is or is not an A/D/A process occurring using the tests I performed; it only shows that theres some type of filtering going on, and we can all agree that a HPF on the mains should NOT be occurring in "Bypass" mode.

To the previous poster that commented on all the glowing reviews of the 990: I totally agree. I don't recall any particular reviews, but the BM issue with "Bypass" mode was quite audible to me.

It's unfotunate that Outlaw has been so slow to resolve this. It's been almost a year since I identified this, and still zero (well, there are some hints and half a rumor, but that's about it).

Otto, totally agree with ya. I was only questioning that the 990 has absolutely no bypass setting and always going through A/D/A. It was my understanding that this was not true.

What I did is very simple. The left channel analog out of the CD player to the pure analog audio preamp (NAD). The right channel trough the Outlaw 990. Guess what, whatever I select stereo or bypass. The Outlaw output was delayed creating echo. This is clear indication that 990 is processing the audio in A/D/A. No bypass. The quality of 990 A/D is very good. I compared it to a Denon 3930CI.
The Denon A/D sound little bit better for me but it could be subjective. The problem starts when you use such a quality A/D converter with analog input of 990. i.e. 7.1 input. Then you get double A/D conversion and that sound ugly. Unfortunately the DVD audio or SACD can’t be converted in the D/A of 990.
Kris