After I talked to tech support at Outlaw, they sent me the previous version of firmware. It is same result even with previous version. It is certainly behaving very strangely. After many hours of attempted tries, I decided to sent the unit back to Outlaw for the repair. It goes out tomorrow but I certainly would like to know what happened.

justhavingfun,
In my case it was quite difficult not to move bunch of cables around while I was trying to reach the USB plug. Is it possible that when you were plugging/unplugging the USB cable, you accidentally damaged some other cable or connector? Scratchy sound can happen when a digital line is losing some bits, or analog line having bad contact.

Actually I unhooked everything and moved to near my desktop computer which has Window XP system on it to do the firmware update. I wish it was just the simple mistake or mix up on my part since shipping back to Outlaw was $43. The sound that I was getting after the update was horrible sound and I actually thought I was going to damage my speakers or other components.

Is it possible that a cable got damaged during the disconnect/reconnect process? Or maybe one connection got miswired? I would check my wiring if the situation is still a mystery after you get the 990 back.

I have place my back up HT processor in place of 990 and my HT sounds as normal as it can be without any static/scratch noise. The noise I got from my 990 was absolutely not what you want to hear from any HT. But as you suggested I am going to check my entire wiring as well after I got my 990 back.

I just received my repaired 990 and it sounds wonderful as before with latest firmware installed. From the time I shipped the item to Outlaw, it took about three weeks to get it back. It is great customer service from the Outlaw Audio as usual. I am very happy so far with the repair. My back up processor Angstrom 200 served me well for about three weeks but it goes back to two channel D/A converter duty for me.

Glad to hear that you are back in business.

How does one check the current version?

(Borrowed from the firmware update notes in my 990 review...) Pressing "SELECT" and "INPUT" on the front panel at the same time while the unit is in standby displays the version number, but be careful because "SELECT" and "MENU" will reset the unit to factory defaults. The version number is displayed as "Version x.xx xx" with the first set of numbers ("x.xx") representing the firmware version (3.10 for the May 21 release, for example) and the second set of numbers (" xx") reflecting the build date of the particular 990 being updated.

Hi.

I'm wondering if anyone has tried to install the update on a Mac running either XP virtualization software (Like Parallels or Fusion) or BootCamp (running XP directly). As I don't have a PC, this is my only option outside of purchasing a PC or breaking down my system and hauling the 990 somewhere TBD to apply the update (which I really need for my rig).

Cheers.