Thanks for the input Sanjay,

I expect that what you say is true, I am trying to put my personal constraints on a surround standard that doesn't fit. I have had pretty good results with my surround channels located on the back wall of my 20'x16' room and can't seem to replicate that with 7.1 processing via the 990. I agree that it may not be the 990's fault, but still may be a limitation that I may choose not to live with. I have already come up with a couple of options for reconfiguring my speakers to optimize 7.1 ch playback.

To update my situation, tonight I recalibrated my current configuration (as described above) using the 990 test tone and have had better results. Decoding seems more accurate now, but very different from results via my Avia test disc.

Since then, I've been trying to play with the Panorama, center width and dimension settings to no avail. I have tried several sources with no discernable effect on sound. As the manual reads, these should be adventageous to my situation, but for the life of me (and both of my sons) we can not hear any difference in altering these settings. As the manual indicates, these effects are only available with Pro Logic II or IIx processing, which I understand. I assume that these effect my be suble, but are they inaudible? I can not hear any change when cycling through the limits of any of these effects - nor can either of my sons (albeit coersed test listeners).

Please remark on what these settings have on your system and describe what you can hear I expect that I should experience some noticable change.