I recently purchased an AV7005 from Outlaw in the hope of replacing my 990 or at least serving as a stop gap until the new 998 is released. As a disclaimer I'll remind everyone that the following is just my own personal experience and opinion of course and encourage all interested members to do their own experimenting. I'd like to first say that Outlaw was very generous in offering a trial period for the AV7005 allowing for a no hassle return in the event that you weren't satisfied (which describes my end result). I played with the 7005 for a couple of weeks before deciding to send it back. The high points for me were it's huge set of features, HDMI 1.4 switching, HD Radio, Satellite radio capable, media center control/access, great video performance, super easy to use automatic set up and EQ...this thing can control and access just about anything it seems! The single low point for me was, in a phrase, sound quality. In comparison to my 990 the sound quality of both the digitally processed sound with or without EQ as well as the analog direct were just not even close to the quality of both of these paths in my 990. I found that for movies, using the EQ processing gave a sort of overblown character to the sound..too much bass in short. This, dare I say, "Bose" like sound seemed to sacrifice nuance and detail and any hope of midrange bliss. This gap in audio performance between the 990 and the 7005 grew even larger when comparing two channel analog direct. The 990, especially as an HT pre/pro and at it's price point, does a pretty darn good job as a two channel preamp when asked to. My experience with the AV7005 was that the same thing could not be said. The 7005 let you know it was an HT pre/pro and it sounded, to me, obvious that it was a mass market type piece of electronics...maybe not quite Best Buy grade...but not a whole lot better. I would venture to say that for a decent percentage of the Outlaw's target market the Marantz AV7005 would satisfy well enough if not entirely. My bias, however, is skewed strongly toward audio performance and I am willing to sacrifice virtually everything else if need be to achieve that. So for now I'll continue to enjoy my 990 and cross my fingers and toes in the hope that a 998 release is not too far off.