Good to hear back from you Pythagore. I am not sure why you are hearing what you are, but if it is drastically worse than your HK receiver something tells me that either it's not set up correctly or its faulty. If not, that really sucks about the amount of money you invested in this trial. Perhaps it would be cheaper to sell it to somebody in Canada to save them from the fees.

Also, I am not sure I am following you, but using Outlaw's parameters on your HK is not going to work. I don't know of any receivers or pre/pro that have universal parameters. Every system will be different and will have to be calibrated individually. Just pick a number to use as your reference and dial it in to 75dbs. Just curious, but does HK's volume stop at 0 or does it keep going past 0 to +10 like the 990? That could explain that issue, even though it really is a non issue.