OPK so the 970 I bought new sounds great. But, the dropout. between DVD chapters, after TV channel changes, etc. but most annoyingly between CD tracks. Is there any way to stop/correct this?

You have to turn off Auto Poll. This is described on page 26 of the 970 manual.

Note that you have to do this for each input. You may not want to do it for TV if your box has some channels digital and some that are only analog-you'll have no sound on the analog only channels. If all you TV channels have digital sound it should work just fine.

This cleared up pretty much all of the dropout problems on my 970.

That worked for me also. Not sure, but I think I also powered off and then back on after making changes.
Jeff

Thanks guys!!! Most appreciated!