Cappra,

That is a good question, I am curious to find out which is better also. It seems Toshiba went with multiple high end DAC's and DSP's for the HD-A1, and I am not sure how they compare to the 990's DACs...but once my HD-A1 arrives I am going to be comparing the two. I currently prefer bypass mode for both music on the D* XM sat channels, and my current Zenith dvd player when playing CD's. Both are connected with optical cables. While I do like the two channel bypass sound for sat music, I am not all that impressed with the sound of CD's in this setup, and tried using the 2 channel analog connection from the dvd player, but did not like that sound much either. The 2 channel analog was tried before updating the 990's firmware, so maybe it sounds better now. Will be a real happy camper if the HD-A1 gives me CD playback that I like.