I'm still on the fence as to whether to purchase a 950 or perhaps an AV receiver with a proven track record for use as a preamp. In addition to the proven performance of receivers in the same price range, such as Denon's 3803, many of the AV receivers on the market have several features that make them seem very attractive compared to the 950, including the ability to upgrade (RS-232), DTS 96/24 capability, ability to rename inputs/sources, ability to automatically select between a digital and audio input, OSD through the component video out, etcetera, etcetera.

Has anyone else suffered through this quandary? If so, do you have any advice or suggestions from your own personal experiences to share?

I just setup my 950/770 system that is replacing a Yamaha RX-V1200. So far I'm not overly impressed. The sound quality is slightly better but that may be due to the $1800 amp and not the processor. My speakers are NHT's with a low sensitivity of 86db which seemed to work the Yammy at higher levels. Again I've only had the setup for a day and am still moving up the learning curve with the processor but I have already seen some limitations in processing capabilities. Example: I can't seem to 7 channel stereo with a digital signal, only seems availiable with an analog feed even though both are stereo signals. Manual says it shouldn't matter so I may have a misconfiguration that I havn't figured out yet. Another issue is the 950 doesn't automatically recognize multiple inputs being fed to it so if you want to change from say analog to coaxial you have to push a button on the remote 5 times! I'll reserve judgment until I have played more and hopefully the benefits will become clear.
By the way I think this is one of the best questions that has been asked on this forum and I hope a lot of people respond that have more experience with this processor. I will add comments as I have them.

Thanks for the feedback, Keta.