That's kind of what I thought. I guess as long as I use my outboard dac and by-pass for music I'm kind of doing that already and that sounds the best to me as far as music goes at least until I decide to try the 990's dacs. For 5.1 I'm running all speakers to small and xover to 60 on fronts and 80 to the center and rears. My Auto Setup is giving lots of errors now but I believe it is close enough I can dial it by ear. I really do think the 990 sounds really good with music (as a preamp) and very impressive for movies.

I'm still trying to figure out how to setup my MX-500 to run the 990 with my Tivo and still keep the settings I need to run the Tivo when the 990 is shut off for late night listening. Maybe I need to create two device settings for the Tivo, one when the 990 is on and one when it is off.

I probably should start another thread about the ground loop. Thanks Gonk!