Has anyone else noticed that the LFE signal in 5 channel stereo is much stronger than in 2 channel? I'm finding when I switch to two channel I have too bring the sub up 10db or so to match the 5 channel performance sub performance. What's that about?

Yep - the sub in 5 Stereo will be louder than in other modes because of the way 5 Stereo works. The reason for this can be traced directly to the way the signal processing is done. First, the left channel is copied to left surround, the right channel is copied to right surround, and a summed signal is sent to the center. At that point, bass management is applied as normal, but this time you have the low frequency component of 2.5 left signals and 2.5 right signals being fed to the sub. The result is a higher level signal being produced for the sub.

Very intersting.....thanks for the explanation And, just as a point of interest....I've had my new 970 for just a couple weeks and my overall impression is very favarable. I love the overall sound and especially the Trim on the fly capabilty. And, I feel either 2 or 5 channel stereo is the way to go for streaming or redbook music.....seems to sound the most natural.
The dolby and neo modes have kind of a resonance or echo sound that to me, at least, detract from the natural quality of the music.

Do you have a similar impression gonk?

Like you, I've long preferred to listen to stereo music sources such as CD's in straight stereo mode. Pro Logic IIx has a less artificial nature to it than older matrix decoding schemes like original Pro Logic, but I tend to still go back to stereo (or more specifically, with my Model 990, upsample).

If you don't mind me asking.....what does upsample do.....and, how useful is it when playing near lossless quality digital streams? Would I be correct in assuming it does not apply to bypass mode?

The 990 has an upsample mode that converts incoming digital signals to 24-bit/192kHz. It also works with stereo analog inputs, I believe, as it applies to the digital output of the A/D conversion. It does not apply to analog bypass mode. I use it with MP3 files of various bitrates played back through a Roku Labs SoundBridge M500 and find it to help smooth out the sound somewhat (nothing drastic). The benefits may be a bit more noticeable for CD's, but some of that may also be the avoidance of any lossy compression - it's been a long time since I played a CD without upsample.