I still suspect that you would be well served to give it a try at some point. It is a balancing act: more "cluttered" signal path with lossless audio vs a digital path with the lossy core track. As for the 990's ADC, I know it is better than 44.1/16bit. I think it is 96k/24bit. It is on the 990's web page (which I would check if I weren't on an iPhone right now).