If the Outlaw 990 has complicated features to you, you definitely never owned or even touch any high end piece of audio equipment. As a matter of fact there is low end receiver out there with more features than this pre/pro.
Hmmm, and yet I am not the one who cannot make an excellent pre pro sound good. You either had a defective unit, are used to bloated highs and lows, or made a calibration error. It wouldn't make sense for the 95% of the people who own it and love it to be wildly off base, it makes more sense for the 5%.