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.