I just played T-2 and the Godfather DVDs - the "static" is plain 'ol clipping of the original sound elements. There's nothing the consumer can do about that. The film's makers either didn't catch the distortion or were unable (or unwilling) to schedule an ADR session to loop the dialog.

Where does this clipping occur?
T2 sounds fine on my system.
(I don't have the Godfather DVD)

Perhaps I missed it.

According to jgubman, "on the special edition it's at chapter 19 about ~31 minutes into the special edition (not the theatrical edition)." Can't say that I noticed it either, but it's been a while since I watched it.

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gonk -- Saloon Links | Pre/Pro Comparison Chart | 950 Review

At this point, would 950 still be the culprit or should it be removed form the list?

I don't have a 950, so it's pretty safe to say it's not it. Or maybe it's not _just_ the 950. Maybe it has something to do with the DACs, which would be common to several pre-pros/receivers.

I think the blatently bad cases of the T2 and Godfather DVDs are definately NOT the 950.

I'm still not willing to let the 950 off the hook though. There's a much subtler form of this static that I still get. I was watching a particularly bad movie last night ("Nothing to lose"), and I heard this "static" again. This form of static isn't the clipping/distortion like on the T2 disc (although that distortion annoys me even more and is probably what started me on this witch hunt), but is rather like an added "raspiness" to voices. Remembering sfield's earlier post, I switched from digital (coaxial 1) to 6-channel analog and then back to digital, and the raspiness was gone (although now my wife had a raspiness in her voice telling me to quit changing the **** audio...).

I watched the rest of the movie sans raspiness and went back to earlier chapters that I remembered it in and they were clear.

I really wish I could describe what I'm hearing better. It's kind of like there's a "snow" or "white noise" around the vocal tracks. It's there no matter what mode I'm in (2.0, analog bypass, 6 channel bypass, 5.1, etc) and is in the mains if I switch from surround to 2-channel. It's noticeable, but not overbearing, just kinda there. It's almost like a really bad sibilance problem...

Switching to 6-channel bypass and then back to digital DEFINATELY cleared it up though. I wonder what doing that could've done. I'll keep my eye on this solution.