Back in the early 90's I had a carver ct-17 connected to a carver m-500t with a pair of Infinity RS-6's(I could be wrong on the exact model #'s). That setup totally rocked!!!!

I had to sell that equipment to pay for college tuition in '96. I just figured I would graduate and buy a new and better setup. But as the saying goes "life happens while you are busy making other plans", ie wife, house, 2 kids, dog, cat, I never did get to "upgrade"

So now 10 years have passed and I finally got back into ht/stero equipment again. The first equipment I went to test was good old Bob Carver's Sunfire gear, I totally loved it, but at about 6k for a pre pro and amp there was no way I could do it. That is when I discovered Outlaw.

I read as much as I could about outlaw but was still a little worried about buying somthing without hearing it first. But as luck would have it last summer outlaw had a demo at a show in nyc. Long story short, I went, I listened, and I had a new love!!!

So I signed up for the 990 pre order list and recieved my unit as part of the second waive shipped.

As far as trying to compare the outlaw equipment to the carver equipment thats almost impossible for me to do. First off my 990 is paired to a 7100. Even though I am running a 5.1 set up and using the 2 "extra" channels to biamp my mains giving me 200wpc, my old carver amp was 250 wps in to 8 ohms, and my old infinity speakers were 6 ohms so I was getting somthing like 300+ wpc. Quite a noticeable difference, I never got my old Carver/Infinity past 50% it was so loud and yet undistorted. whereas now its not unusuall for me to listen to 2ch at about the 0 volume level. Second I am running my outlaw gear through Infinity beta 50's which I feel are quite inferior to my old Infinity RS-6's. I got them at a such a low price I could not turn them down(I plan to be upgrading to axiom speakers within the next year, my wife just doesent know it yet!)

In conclusion I guess I would say my old carver/infinity setup was slightly "warmer" and had slightly better "soundstaging"(I am not an expert, thats just how I would describe it) than my current outlaw/infinity setup. but I believe that 90% of the difference is due to the speakers. but here is the kicker, I love my outlaw/infinity setup twice as much as my old carver/infinity gear!!! the outlaw gear totally kicks ass for ht, every time I throw in a dvd it blows me away!!! so I dont mind what I feel is very slight drop in 2ch performance(like 5%) when I have fantastic ht setup.

I wish I could help you out more. I still miss my carver gear, but more for nostalgic reasons than a difference in sound quality. I am adding a new family room to the house next year and my plan is to pick up a sunfire amp on audiogon/ebay and compare it to a 7700. thats the beauty of the 30 try at home policy, and somthing you may want to try. but as far as the 990 goes that is a deal that just cant be beat as far as function vs price