i dont know whose post said not as musical .. but if mine is the one your refering to i said nothing about direct or bypass . using the 990 dacs is what i m talking and yes dacs are different ..you are converting 0101010 back to a analog signal .. diff dacs take more or less points to make their analog wave .. and also take a adcom vs a ATI .. the adcom will color a little brighter and the ati more neutral .. yes amps color .. these arent just different boxes.. ...... you have capacitors transformers etc .. look at the adcom upgrade kit.. 200 $ upgrades the transformer and 2 caps and you have a great dynanmic headroom gain .. and if your using a true bypass or direct in stereo you should have no sub out slick .. direct is Left and Right channel as recorded at studio .. you are implementing a x over separating the signal .. if you want direct bypass buy a high end dvd with decoder and a gain assembly for between you source and you amp .. then all you video must go to tv and you select inputs rather than letting the pre pro do it for you .. i have a yamaha dvdc 920 that has dts and dd decoding built in .. and yes back when i had a adcom gdd1 and a gsa700 the direct from the yamaha was better but dac s technology is flying along .. hence the 990 having a usb and other upgrade capability.... other companies have tried this and some succeed for a while .. lexicon dc .. etc some fail proceed .. but i think the folks at outlaw have tried to anticipate as much as possible .. and for the $$ great deal.