On the 950, the rear channels are silent when using the 5.1 analog input.

In that case, the only way to hear the surround channels out of both sets of surround speakers is to use splitters between the 950 and the amps. You'd have to split the side speaker output of the 950 and send it to the amps for the side and rear speakers.

That's really too much of a hassle for listening to the occasional SACD and DVD-A. Better to move up to the 990, where you have access to the pre-pro's side and rear speakers. Then, you can simply split the player's two surround channel outputs to all four of the 990's surround inputs.

Meanwhile, I think Outlaw got it right on the 950 by routing the surround info to the side speakers instead of the rears.

Since the 990 is going to have 7.1 analog inputs for SACD and DVD-A, my question is this...does anyone know when the formats are going to be done in 7.1, or the Universal players are going to have 7.1 outputs? Is there going to be something in the 990 that will take the 5.1 analog outputs from the current DVD players, and matrix the rear channels (6 & 7, respectively) from the SACD's? I didn't know if there was such a thing while in "bypass", but it would be a cool feature for the analog inputs. (The 950 does a great job of creating 6th and 7th channels from 5.1 digital sources through the optical connection! I'm going to miss my 950...

Btw, just in case anyone is reading this that can help...I have noticed that since I hooked up my projector using a DVI connection from my Denon 2910, I can't see the menus on the DVD-A discs. Has anyone has this problem, or know a work around (other than running component cables to the projector)?