When I start playing a cd, the sound doesn't start until just slightly after the first track starts. Sometimes this results in the first beat of the first song getting cut off.

I'm not sure if this behavior is from the 990 or my oppo 981HD dvd player.

Does anyone know if this is normal, and if so, can it be adjusted?

The 990 is acquiring the digital signal and determining the format that it is in (PCM stereo, Dolby Digital 2.0, Dolby Digital 5.1, DTS 5.1, etc.) so that it can decode it properly. This is normal behavior.

Thanks gonk,

For 2-speaker music listening, do you still prefer upsample with the digital connection?

More newbie thoughts...

I'm thinking that there ought to be a CD-stereo mode that pre-sets the decoding to avoid the lag. I wonder if the concern was that for other source types such as movies, you could have a situation where there would be no sound at all in the CD-stereo-only mode?

Is this a characteristic of most HT processors? If so it suggests a simple preamp setup might be better for just music.

This is an annoying problem for me as well. I have read reviews of other pre/pros that cost much more that have this same problem. It is too bad there wasn’t a way to “lock” in a particular mode for CD playback so the processor wouldn’t have to decide which mode to use. One thing that does eliminate the problem is to use an analog connection for the CD player.

The problem is common to all surround processors and receivers. In fact, the 990's delay is on the fast side compared to some. Products based on the older 49300 can take noticeably longer (Outlaw's old Model 950 took around 1.5 to 2 seconds, depending on the signal type, and Emotiva's LMC-1 takes 2 to 3 seconds). It's a pesky side effect of the broad array of possible digital signals available to us.
The Model 950 did include something like this, as you could "lock" a given input on a certain surround mode. The 990 dropped this, as I believe did the 1070/970. This was likely due in part to the faster acquisition time, but part of it was also likely a reaction to fears about users getting messed up by it. Cable and satellite receivers both offer an assortment of possible signals (especially when you toss HD into the mix), DVD's can carry every possible format and routinely employ at least two different formats just to get the movie going (menus use Dolby 2.0 most of the time), game consoles and media players are just as bad as DVD's about being impossible to pin down, and even the trusty CD can potentially throw DTS at you as well as PCM stereo. I don't know what you would hear if you decoded DTS as PCM, but you would either get nothing at all or you'd get an incoherent noise that could potentially inflict damage on speakers if the volume was too high at the time.
True - you can avoid the problem by using an analog input, assuming that the CD player itself doesn't have any such delay. A CD player is likely designed solely to work with standard audio CD's, in which case it'll work fine with PCM stereo but probably can't play DTS CD's at all (no DTS decoder). A DVD player used for CD playback may still have the problem, though, just at a different place in the signal path.

Yes, I do.

this is a simple solution to this problem.. use a CD player instead of a DVD player to listen to music. CD players are pretty inexpensive these days.

I have a Marantz CC4300 5 disc carousel CD player for music. No cutting off any notes on my music listening.

I presume that you are connecting via analog, Skyblazer - right?

Actually gonk, a CD player will play back DTS CD's but if your receiver/prepro doesn't decode the bitstream all you will hear is a horrible speaker blowing digital screech.

mike