[/QUOTE]I also have a Panasonic DVD / DVD-A player (Panasonic RP91), and use the Outlaw 950 Stereo Bypass Mode for all two channel music listening. My observations are similar to yours. Bypass Mode is significantly better, which seems to imply that the Panasonic DAC's and/or circuits are superior.

The RP91 also can upsample CD's to 88.2 kHz/24bit before converting to analog output. I believe this feature smoothes out higher frequencies (less strident than the unconverted signal) coming from this player.

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I have the same setup, but I prefer the DAC's on the 950. I think the digital bass management of the 950 makes the difference in my case. The bass using the analog bypass sounds muddy.