I don't know if the poor quality of SACDs prior to an Oppo is exclusive to Pioneer or not. I had a Pioneer DV-563A for years. Dual format with DVD-Audio and SACD but SACDs were always greatly inferior to the DVD-Audio quality on the Pioneer. I had assumed it was the nature of the SACD format. When I replaced the Pioneer with the Oppo 890H it was a night and day difference with SACDs (DVD-Audio continues to sound great). CDs even sounded better when played through the Oppo analog to feed my 950. Oppos 5.1 (& 7.1) matrix for stereo sources is very impressive. In fact, I sometimes use the Oppo analog feed for movies too. Of course with the 950 we only get 5.1 through analog inputs. I still prefer DVD-Audio sound quality to SACD but that could be a whole different debate.