I'm glad to hear that the 970 has worked out so well for you. I like the feedback, too - always useful to see comments like that.

I've been using a DVD player as a transport for CD's and letting my processor's DAC's handle the rest. I started doing that a while back, using a Panasonic DVD-RA60 as CD transport, but at the moment I'm using my Yamaha DVD-S1500 as CD transports and universal audio player (the Oppo handles DVD-Video).