I recently replaced my 950 with a 990 after the 950 died one sad morning. It served me well for a number of years and I've been enjoying the 990. I have one question about a difference I see between the 950 and 990. I have an external Musical Fidelity Dac that I used with my 950. I had the digital output of the 950 feed the Dac and the analog outs of the Dac fed the 950 CD inputs. If I wanted to listen to a CD or to my Apple Express I would set the 950 to CD and change the digital input to whatever source I wanted to listen to. This fed the digital signal to the Dac and I would select Bypass on the 950 which then used the analog inputs. This no longer works with the 990. If I use the menu to change the CD input to analog it doesn't pass the digital signal to the Dac and Bypass of course is still using the digital signal. Is there some way I can get back to using the external Dac by having the 990 route the digital signal and yet still listen to the analog inputs for the CD?

That was an ingenious arrangement with the 950 - I wouldn't have thought that it would work that way!

The best way to do this is to put the DAC between your CD player and the 990. If you have more than one source that you plan to pair with the DAC, you may need to get a switch box of some sort to put upstream of the DAC.

Hey Gonk,
do you think the Outlaws will include the 990 in the Oppo combo's? Also, did I read somewhere there is a discount on the 997 for current 990 owners? Does that just apply to the 990 or the 970 as well. Thanks

Not unless they ever get the 2 of them to work properly together!

How do they not work properly?

My BDP83 and 990 combo is great!

Thanks Gonk, I was afraid you were going to say I might need a switch box. I guess I leave the DAC in place and switch cables for those special listening sessions. The 950 was great the way I had it connected. You could send any digital source through it just by switching the input from the front panel. It was also a little dangerous since a DVD soundtrack looked like complete garbage to the DAC and you'd get horrible noise. I had to be carful to set everything back to normal when I was done listening. My BDP83 is on the truck and scheduled to arrive today.

I have no idea. As audionirvana points out, it would probably wait until after the coaxial/optical compatibility issue gets fixed.
Model 970 and Model 990 owners get a $200 discount on the 997. Model 950 owners get a $100 discount.

So is mine but.... Select Bitstream out on the BDP-83, play a cd via coax or optical and after the cd starts playing, advance to the next track. Silencio.
You must have PCM selected in the 83 for this to not happen, which is fine for cd, but when you play a dvd with PCM selected, you will be limited to 2 channel PCM not 5.1 Dolby. You must change the 83 to bitstream to hear 5.1. Nuisance.
Hopefully they, Oppo/Outlaw, are working to resolve this incompatibility.

I believe that OPPO has a 990 in their lab now to aid in testing.

That is good news, thanks Gonk.