Maybe it's just me, but I've been wanting to move to separates, and have been waiting for the 978 to drop, hoping that it would leave a trail of 9.x breadcrumbs to the 998. If the 998 has the same feature set as the 978, excepting Trinnov, I'll be more than a little disappointed in the lack of 9.x or 11.x; the strange input issues aside, the output may be a deal breaker for me.