I just received my new 970 yesterday and started to set up the input levels, etc. When I tried to play my "Take Five", Dave Brubeck Columbia cd through the digital coaxial input, it could not play it in straight stereo. It would always revert to a surround mode and resisted any manual stereo setting. This is a great recording that still deserves good ol' stereo playback.Other cd's did not exhibit this behavior. Any clues?

Hi,
I had the same problem with one CD ("KFOG Live from the Archives Vol 12").

-Sandeep

Does it only effect that CD? And what did you do to try to change to stereo mode?

Hi Gonk,
For me that is the only CD, so far. Others that I have tried work fine. I did try to force it into Stereo mode through the Input Config menu as well. That did not work. It did let me pick 5 channel stereo.
For my case, I am using a DVD player to feed the 970. However, that definitely worked before with my Marantz SR4400. I have tried changing DVD players.
It could be a bug.
-Sandeep

Odd that it would allow 5 Stereo but not regular stereo, especially since it only did it on that one disc. In theory, pressing the "stereo" button should cycle through "stereo," "5 stereo," and "7 stereo" (if you have rear surrounds).

Follow up...I tried a bunch of other cd's and did not have this problem. I suppose some cd's contain an extra data stream that wasn't supposed to be "seen", and the Outlaw is reading it as a surround sound instruction. Still, I hope a future firmware upgrade will address this issue. As for the rest of my 970, I am absolutely thrilled. I just hope the Lord of Rings and Star Wars sagas I will be playing my entire Christmas weekend do not expose any bugs. Merry Christmas y'all.

I suspect that both LotR and Star Wars have been piped through the 1070 enough times to shake any bugs loose, and the 970 shares all the same architecture. Have a merry Christmas!