Ah, of course...it "creates" a center from the L/R signal! The sound is audible only if I put my ear to the speaker...say 1" or less. So this is not really an "issue" - it just seemed a bit strange to me. Is this something the 950 is doing? Not sure, otherwise it would have been reported a while ago. Any thoughts?

Update - I had someone else try it with their receiver and they hear the same muffled echo/warble/etc. of portions of the dialog. It doesn't seem like a speaker problem as I would expect the receiver/pre-pro to do the appopriate processing and the speakers just play whatever signal they are given.