Anthem had a reputation for providing a lot of quality and performance for the price - they clearly put a lot of engineering thought into the design of their products, both on features and on the nuts and bolts integration of the pieces. I would expect them to make sure that the overall design was solid. The fact that the 990 has DAC's with better specs is likely due in part to the fact that the basic chassis design (the P-965) and associated component selection is several years newer than the AVM-20 design (the AVM-30 is basically a tweaked and updated AVM-20, not a completely new product, which is why the two share so many specs). Before anyone thinks we're dismissing the difference in specs entirely, however, I will say that Lawrence's observation is certainly of interest, and it speaks well of the components (at least the DAC's) being used in the 990.

Eastech has done a lot for Outlaw in the past (both the 1050 and 950, and possibly the 1070), but the 990 is coming from Etronics. Etronics' reputation and Outlaw's past efforts to be picky about quality control would suggest that the end results are at least on par with what was provided by Eastech in the past.

I haven't posted here since the start of this thread, but I have to say that I was very interested to read about the methodical and fair manner in which jcmccorm conducted his testing. I look forward to hearing which unit he decides to keep. It sounds like a win-win for him.