Well, here goes part two. Again, the short story - 990 flies back to Outlaws as fast as possible, Arcam loaner goes back to the shop until I decide if I can part with another grand, H/K 635 is back in the rack until then.

Here is the long story.
The two units sound apparently (and appallingly) different. Comparing to the Arcam, the 990 is just weird. I discovered that it colors the sound is so many unexpected ways it's unbelievable. Yes, the harshness - comparing to Arcam it seems like there is a boost of mid-high frequencies and up. But that's not all. The low end is screwed up too. Sometimes there is bass coming out from the 990 that should not be nearly as heavy. The biggest problem is that this bass is not right. It's "cheap" bass, bulging someplace around 80-60Hz and not extending much deeper. For example the beginning of the Diana Krall DVD where a double-bass (is it the right name? contrabass?) is playing was so unnatural with 990 it was almost unbearable to listen. With the Arcam is was very natural and went so deep something rattled on the shelf.

The Arcam sounds very neutral with no colorization of any kind. Not harsh or bright at all. Extremely clean and detailed. It’s so silky and smooth with music, you just want to keep listening. With the 990 it was hardly possible.

There are few bad things too. Some clicks and pops. Only one global crossover (I think unacceptable on a dedicated pre/pro costing over $2K.) Some usability issues (for example all sound modes have to be cycled through with a single button.) I does sound a little too thin on recordings where there is no good bass recorded (Uriah Heep Magician's Birthday comes to mind), but just excellent on recording with good bass (Diana Krall DVD for example.) With the Outlaw it's actually (and sadly) the opposite.

Strangely the surround decoding works very differently on the Arcam too. It creates wider and more spacious soundstage, which kind of encircles you. But the H/K 635 decoding is more similar to 990, so I'm not sure what exactly the Arcam guys did and how true is it to Dolby standard. For example - running phase calibration from the Avia DVD between left front and left rear turned to be impossible as the Arcam mixes sound in such a way that the phase changes between these two channels are alsmost indistinguishable. Strange.

Anyway, the conclusion is that comparing to the AVP700, the 990 sounds like a very high quality boombox. Keeping the tradition with all other boomboxes, it boosts some frequencies so that the percieved sound may appeal better to some. It does it exceptionally well though, the boosting. Very clean, no boominess, just a little harshness. But the sound that comes out of it is very inaccurate and is very far from the original recording. For home theater it is pretty good (lot more boom on explosions), but for music – forget it.

The material listened (tried to make it different):
Diana Krall Live in Paris DVD
Tori Amos Fade to Red DVD
Steve Hackett Somewhere in South America DVD
Bjork Cambridge DVD
Procol Harum Live at the Union Chapel DVD
John Wetton Amorata DVD
Genesis Selling Englan by the Pound CD (mostly Firth of Fith)
Kate Bush The Kick Inside CD
Uriah Heep Magician's Birthday CD
Mike Oldfield Amarok CD
Roger Waters Amused to Death CD
Van Der Graaf Generator Godbluff CD
Eloy Ocean CD
Suzeanne Vega CD
Yes Relayer CD
King Crimson Lizard CD

On neither of the material I even remotely preferred the 990. Arcam sounded better on every recording.

The story continues – I took the 990 out of the rack forever and put the H/K 635 back. So I played a little with H/K and Arcam. Arcam does sound cleaner, but I noticed that on some older CDs it produced more hiss, so I set the Treble on the H/K to +4dB and made the highs practically identical. Now H/K sounds as detailed (well, almost) as the Arcam. Good thing is it still is not nearly as harsh as the 990. The mid-low bass on the H/K may sound a little better than on the Arcam, there is somehow more of it but its cleanness is questionable and it’s a little boomy. The deep bass on the Arcam is much better and, well, deeper. In the previous post I wrote that H/K bass was muddy. I don’t think it’s true anymore. It’s just the 990’s bass was so exaggerated that comparing to it the 635’s bass sounded less defined. Arcam is more similar to the H/K with the bass, just does resolve it better.

Overall – I can live with the H/K until Arcam guys clean up some bugs with their pre/pro and maybe release an updated model. If not these little annoyances I’d buy it tomorrow as to me its sound quality is worth the extra grand.
I definitely could not live with the 990.