So the Pioneer-Sansui-Outlaw-Cinenova signal path sounds better than the Pioneer-Outlaw-Cinenova path? That's sort of a head-scratcher. If we were looking at the Sansui in place of the 950, that would be one thing, but the 950 is still in the signal path. Hmmm... Oh, well, it sounds like the Sansui is going to work out for your two-channel setup at least.

Overall, I've been very satisfied with the two channel performance of my 950. The one time I remember feeling like CD playback was thin was shortly after I got my current DVD player (Yamaha DVD-S1500) and discovered that when multichannel output is enabled for DVD-Audio discs, CD's played through the 5.1 output went through Dolby Pro Logic II processing before leaving the player - a setting issue within my player, not part of the 950. Using the S1500's stereo analog output for CD's solved that problem.