My new (refurbished) 990 arrived and I finally hooked it up tonight. I'm in the process of merging my home theater and 2-channel stereo systems into one, so out goes the 6-year-old Onkyo receiver and Atlantic sat/sub set that has served me dutifully... and as long as my expectations in the 2-channel world are met, so too goes the Aragon 24ksp preamp and Rotel RB-980bx amp. A 7500 should be arriving tomorrow assuming the FedEx gods smile upon me.

So I began tonight by removing the Aragon preamp... a really fine piece of electronics with the much revered Penny & Giles potentiometer and clean Krell 'family' design. I've always liked how it sounded, or didn't sound, and while it was a better match with my old Cary 50SL tube amps, the Aragon and Rotel always played nicely together. Most recently I've been running Martin Logan SL3 speakers, having replaced a pair of B&W P6s about a year ago. Come to think of it, the Aragon has been with me longer than any other piece of audio equipment I currently own... just shy of fifteen years. It's the one piece of equipment that I've owned and loved, and have really gotten to know quite well.

This evening I put the 24ksp aside... connected the 990 in its place between my Cary modified CD-50 CD player (analog outs) and the Rotel amp, and began some casual listening evaluations in 'bypass' mode. Comparisons are difficult... perhaps if equipment had feelings, unkind. Do you know the feeling when you kiss someone new for the first time? It was a lot like that... quite nice, but unfamiliar and not exactly what I expected, but completely enchanting in its own right, and though comparisons come to mind, they're difficult to fully express, but hey... it's just electronics. I'm all for personification, but my equipment won't be hurt. Shit, I don't think it can read.

The first huge difference I hear is that the 990 presents a much better defined soundstage. Instruments are in their place and locked there. Broad and true, straight across the room, and stretching well past the boundaries of my speakers, I'm hearing intricacies and detail that I've missed in the past. Further, the 990 is hyper detailed... analytical even. Personifying again for a moment, it's as if the 990 speaks so articulately that it's only now that I'm realizing that my 24ksp had a bit of an accent. In all fairness, I liked that accent... it was sweet and warm, comforting even, but not as careful and clear as this more well spoken lady. Technically speaking, vocal tracks, particularly female ones, don't seem to image quite as strongly. The more I listen, I've begun to consider the possibility that my Aragon preamp lacks a bit of channel separation that I'm now experiencing. What I may have enjoyed as center imaging may have been little more than crosstalk. I feel so deceived.

I think the 990 has found a new home. I'm not sure it's love at first kiss, but I can see the potential in this one... she's got something I like... something not completely familiar, but enchanting and exciting, at least enough for a second date. Perhaps I'll let her sing to me over breakfast.

- Jason

Glad to hear that first impressions have been positive, Jason. And welcome to the saloon.

Thanks, gonk... good to be here. I've been lurking for a long time, and your posts have been extremely helpful.

I noticed this morning that the bass control on my system is dramatically improved. Dynamic range is much better, and transient attacks are sharper and clearer. I'm actually extremely surprised that swapping my preamp for the 990 could make my system sound this different. It sounds much more like I swapped amps, and the new amp hasn't even arrived yet.

I'm hopeful that the amp makes similar improvements in my system, but if not, I won't hesitate to just grab a lesser multi-channel amp for my center and surrounds, and keep the Rotel RB-980. It's never sounded better.

- Jason

I think you will like the 7500/990 pairing. It is deathly quiet and the transients punch with incredible definition. The most "invisible" sounding 100 pounds of metal I've ever "not heard". Try upsample mode.

Guido - you're right on the money. The 7500 is really a great pair with the 990. The attack is fantastic, and I've never heard the SL3s under such perfect control. Well, in fairness, I've heard them sound this good exactly once, and that was at Pass Labs display room at Stereophile '96, but otherwise I usually hear some excusable issues with the speakers. The issues are gone - I love this setup. Had I any idea how good the Outlaw product really were, I'd have made the upgrade much sooner. I'm just stunned.

Thanks for the recommendation to try the 'upsample' mode. It definitely smooths out vocals and strings which had a tendency to sound a little brittle at times in bypass mode, but it's splitting hairs. However, the upsample mode engages the 990s crossovers, right? I tried setting the mains as 'large' and cranked the high-pass filter down as low as it goes (40Hz I think). Is that as 'off' as it goes besides bypass mode? Once I get the subwoofer hooked up and tuned via the SMS-1, this will hopefully be a non-issue.

I'm pretty sure my neighbors are pissed. I live in a high rise apartment building, and the folks across the hall just moved in about 2 weeks ago. The day they were moving in, I was mastering a recording and doing listening tests on my main system and my Genelec 1031s at the mastering desk... and now I've been playing bits and pieces of bizarrely assorted music for the last two days. It's a blast for me at least.

Thanks again for the pointers.

- Jason

Upsample brings things into the digital domain. As a result, you will get bass management if the mains are set to "small" - if they're large, you're still not getting bass management (the crossover setting would then be ignored).

So the "small/large" would perhaps be more accurately labeled as "high-pass filter enabled/bypassed"? Interesting! Steep learning curve here, but it's a fun climb.

Thanks,
Jason

Yeah, "small" and "large" are the terms that sort of got adopted by the industry as a whole back in the 90's, before the corresponding high pass and low pass filters became adjustable. Originally, you'd set speakers to "small" or "large" and crossovers that were fixed - typically at 80Hz, although there were plenty of receivers using crossover points as high as 120Hz - would steer low frequency data to the sub if "small" was chosen. Even when that global crossover started becoming adjustable (as in Outlaw's old Model 1050), the method was still pretty clear. It can become a bit less clear when you offer the option of adjustable crossovers for individual speaker sets, so you can set a speaker set to "large" and then adjust its crossover even though that crossover won't be used. I suppose that one solution would be to design the user interface such that the crossover settings would only be adjustable when the corresponding speakers are set to small and just display a dash or some other non-numeric indicator for speaker groups that are set to large...

Well then you'll just have to invite them over. Enjoy

Barely a week, and I'm afraid the love affair may not last. The 'bypass' mode on the 990 doesn't work properly if speakers are set to 'small' (which one must do to enable to high-pass filters for main speakers). So the 990 can't do a great job of acting as a single pre/pro for both stereo and theater since one can't just hit 'bypass' to skip all the bass management that most of us appreciate in home theater but many despise for 2-channel audio.

I'm really torn. The 990 sounds wonderful. The only workaround I can envision would be to use the SMS-1 and 12-volt triggers for theater inputs, set the main speakers as 'large', and keep my fingers crossed that the mains don't have any subsonic filtering when blasting a movie.

The 990 could really benefit from some more crossover options. The current setup is far too limiting, even with the SMS-1. The HP side has a bunch of options that would be well suited to smaller speakers, but really only two settings meant for large speakers - 40Hz or nothing.

And what's the story on how the low-pass actually works... forget what the manual says, because at least mine doesn't appear to do what's in print. Seriously though... I set my fronts to 'large' because that seems to be the only way to get the bypass mode to work well, and I can live with that. So then my subwoofer options are 'None' (which works properly), 'L/R+Sub' (which appears to work properly... hard to say as it's not well understood by this deputy), and 'LFE Only' which does NOT send a subwoofer signal to the sub, but does send a very slight noise to the sub which I can detect just by touching the woofer surround.

For most of this testing, I've had my fingers on the sub surround to make sure what I'm hearing is really what's happening. The 'LFE Only' mode clearly is nothing, but the noise isn't something I'd ever hear... just that I can confirm that it's not as quiet as the 'None' setting, so the 990 is trying to do something I guess.

In retrospect, this is all with a 2-channel analog input. Playing a DVD results in working 'LFE Only' mode, so long as I'm not in 2-channel mixdown... but that makes sense I guess.

It's so confusing. All I can say for certain is that the 990 is clearly a woman. I'm just not sure what to make of her.

- Jason