I have not seen mention or discussion of this subject anywhere and wondered what you all think.
My Pioneer DV45A has many many settings within its menu, the vast majority of which are duplicated and/or exacerbated in the 950.
What is the school of thought here?
Do I bypass all the appropriate settings in the DVD player and just set the 950?
Old school thought (and still a great one)was that the less signal processing, the better (cleaner) the signal is going to be in the final result. (Stereophile harped on that for years - remember the rabid discussion of that "DDD", and dirivatives of such, they used to put on the CD's! Digital to Analog to Digital to Analog - it drove purists nutso!)
Of course, these modern digital processors make it all but impossible to pass a virgin signal without messing with it in some way or another.
My own thought was that only one should do the work and it should be the unit with the best ability to do so, but i've talked to several folks that have set both. I have to believe there is some signal fighting going on with that.

Any thoughts?

I agree with your take on this. The less processing the better, and do the processing on the best unit for the job.

Pick one and stick with it. But the choice might not be obvious.

For example...

The analog-out of my Sony 900NS produces a much more detailed and airy reproduction of CD's than the DAC's in my 950. So, for CD playback, I always use the analog-out of the Sony going to the 6-channel bypass of the 950. (Unless I want to play with DPL2 or Neo:6)

However, the DD/DTS decoding in the 950 is easily superior to the Sony, so I use the digital output of the Sony, going to a digital-in on the 950, for DVD playback.

I agree that you only want to do D/A conversion once in the chain. But experiment -- as "da Hound" suggests -- to find out which processor is best for the task at hand.

set all speakers to large and subwoofer to yes in your pioneer and do all decoding, bass management (analog and digital) and level adjustments through the circuitry provided in the 950.

since cd is the least relevant of all the formats involved with these two items (the dv45a and the 950), you can try a set of analog rca cables (in addition to the digital connection) for the cd and switch back and forth to see which decoder you prefer.

sacd and dvd-a are decoded in the dv45a and sent out of the player in analog, so, no choice there, but bass management should be handled by the 950 or an icbm if you require more high pass options.

dd, dd-ex, dts, dts-es should be passed to the 950 to be processed and decoded.

any further options would require a better player, analog processing, one more amp/sub and...way more bucks.

the short answer to your question (paragraph 1) is...yes.

also, with this player and the 950, playing sacd and dvd-a with 5 full range speakers, a sub and equidistant spacing of all 6, with the 5 analog outputs of the dv45a into the 5 correspoding inputs of the 950 (analog bass management, off) and the sw output of the dv45a into a seperate preamp then the sub (to avoid double bass), that's as pure a signal path as your gonna get with these components...and it SOUNDS GOOD!

BTW: i just finished trying all of the available menu options with the dv45a playing all of the above formats through a 950 last week to come to the above conclusions. hope it helps.

I use the 950 for all digital sources: CD, DVD-V.

But I use the 47ai for all (better) analog sources: DVD-A, SACD.

So I have all the levels set in both.

Thanks guys,
I happened to have set things up with the 950 doing most of the work and i'm very happy with the results. I have not tested or verified whether the DAC is better in my Marantz CD63SE CD player than is in the 950, but I beleive The Marantz uses a single bit DAC, so the 950 will get the nod there too.
Hell, I'm going to have several pieces of equipment to stack in the closet now - Faithful units like the Musical fidelity X10D and an old C9 Carver holographic processor, are hard to do without, but the straight digital line from the CD63SE to the 950 sounds worlds better !

What are your thoughts on the comparison of optical vs coaxial for the digital connection. I have read for years in Stereophile (who detest toslink) to stay away at all costs from optical, but surely fibre optic is cleaner ?

My $0.02, and I'm sure other will disagree. I always prefer coax, and here are the reasons why:

1) Coax cable is physically more rugged. Fiber optic cables are much easier to "break".

2) Sending a digital signal via the optical cable requires 2 additional data conversions: electrical to optical, and back. More opportunities for introduction of jitter.

3) I have heard references to "digital fog" when people talk about optical. Of course, that might go back to Stereophile.

4) My admittedly uninformed knowledgebase says that cheap DVD players and CD players only have optical outputs. Have to go more expensive to get both.

But at the end of the day, I have actually used both, and I could never hear or see a difference between them.

i just bought a pioneer 47a and would appreciate a more detailed set-up from mr. kevin brown. it seems like there are too many options for my little brain. thankyou.

about that optical/co-ax thing. in the consumer market i am not as knowledgable. we do use fiber a bit in the field..and i love it out there...kicks microwave and sat trans. butt. but that is different than ...the way it appears to be applied with ...equipment that doesn't cost the gross national product of china. has nothing been done in this field to allow a really great concept to work? anyone handling this one? i do remember several articles in TAS or Stereophile concerning this area...and they weren't pleased about it's progress, either. but that was seveeral years ago...we wouldn't use fiber year ago, either...cause of it's tensile strength and the long and tedious repair rate if ya broke one. that was then, today you can actually run a tank over the better brands...repair comes in a kit...heck ya can't even see the 'real' fiber with your eye balls...it's inside the plastic/glass that most people mistake as the 'fiber'...teeny tiny thing, it is. now ya just put the two broken ones is each side, turn around 3 times while during a full moon ... and chant the prayer of Thoth...and wa-la..it works again. hasn't any of this filtered down. all they gotta do, is work on that little 'transducer' device...the one that sucks.

In the current issue of Stereophile, FWIW, John Atkinson had a comment about "the limited bandwidth" of optical toslink vs coax. No explanation, just that comments in regards to a D-A converter review or something.