I have a two channel DAC with Toslink input that feeds my front two speakers. If I pass 24/96 audio from my computer through the 970 to the DAC, I get a lock and beautiful music. If I feed a Dolby Digital signal from my DirectTV receiver through the 970 or from the Bluray player in the computer through the 970, I get alot of buzzing and cracking from the 2-channel DAC, which means the 970 is passing the Dolby Digital signal straight through the digital out. My dac only understands 16/44.1 through 24/192 two channel.

Can I limit the digital out on the 970 to 2-channel (even 16/44.1) but leave the DDig in place so I can still feed the center and rear channels?

To state it another way, I only want to feed a TosLink to the main 2-channel front speakers. One reason is the better sound I can achieve with my specialty DAC, but the other problem is I have a ground loop that can only be solved by removing solid wire connections between the "main 2-channel system" and the "center and rear system" that makes up the 5.1 system.

I'm guessing the 970 won't allow me to do this and that I'll have to get an intermediate box between the 970's digital output and the 2 channel DAC that splits out the front two channels.

Thanks!

Mark

No - as far as I know, the digital output is a pure pass-through, so whatever digital signal is sent to the 970 will be passed on to the output.
I'm not sure that's going to be possible. The only way to split the digital signal in this manner is to be able to decode Dolby Digital and DTS bitstreams, at which point you have a set of signals (six digital channels) that won't all fit across any digital output except HDMI. I suppose that it could abandon everything except those two channels, but that is a specialty need that may not exist...