I have a problem and question for us 990 users. It's a good thing I've pre-entered the stations I listen to, because I couldn't find some of them by scanning; the tuner stops where there is no station, nothing but noise, and skips my favorite classical station (KUSC, broadcasting to Santa Barbara at 88.7 with enough signal that I can hear it with just a non-terminated length of coax connected to the 990). So no BS now - is this kind of scanning performance normal, and if not is it correctable?
(I raised this question also on the RR2150 site but it really belongs here.)

I've had the same scanning problem. The 990 won't find WCPE in Durham. Mabey classical stations are just harder to recognize.

IMHO I personally do not think the FM section of the 990 is really up to par.
You have to remember that it is really designed as a home theater pre/pro and they just have to throw in the AM/FM side to try to meet everybody needs.
The Sony 3100ES that I replaced with the 990 had a much better FM side to it.

Thanks for your replies, koyaan and butchgo, pessimistic as they are. To my ears the phono preamp is more than "just thrown in" - though as stated elsewhere I'd have liked about 10db more gain there - and KCLU's sound on the LA Philharmonic's live broadcast when wonder boy Gustavo Dudamel conducted the Symphonie Fantastique was hair-raisingly good. My gripe is just the poor search performance on FM (AM too, though I rarely listen to it).
Scott, any words from you?

Scott, should I tacitly conclude that Butchgo's opinion of the 990's tuner is right?

For what it's worth, Scott and the other Outlaws only occasionally post here in the saloon, so his lack of comment in this thread may not necessarily say anything either way about the design of the 990's tuner.

Since the 990 is built on an existing platform (the Sherwood 965), it's likely that they ended up using what was there with minimal (if any) changes to the tuner from the 965. The original selection of that tuner was most likely not one of the higher priorities in the 965 development process. I've used my 990's tuner too little to say much about it, although I've not found it to be any worse (or appreciably better) than the tuner from my Model 950...

Until I hooked up an OTA antenna to my 990 and Marantz AVR, the only decent tuner in my house was


...wait for it...


...wait for it...


the Bose Wave radio.

The 990's tuner was better in scanning than my old Parasound AVC-1800 HT processor but not as good as my current Pioneer Elite VSX-74TXVi AVR. This using the supplied FM antenna that came with each component and mounted at the same location.