The more I watch TV and flip through the channels the more this pop irritates me. It shouldn’t do this. If it is not a defect then it is a design flaw. The 990 should mute the audio until it has locked onto the digital signal and can cleanly decode it. I really think the balanced cables that I recently upgraded to made the pop more pronounced. If this pop would have been this bad when I first got the 990 I would have sent it back. Are others that have this problem with the pop using balanced cables?