First I'd like to say that I love my 950...BUT

Simply stated:

Bass management should either be ON or OFF,
not some in between state which is the reality of the 950s' bass management.

If it is on, then no exteral bass management device can be used

If it is off, then an external solution must be provided.

That having been said, if you have a 950 and want to use an external bass management solution, you will be unable to properly reproduce the original recording.

I'm an electronics field engineer for Solid State Logic Inc. and am professionally involved in the configuration and setup of most high end studios capable of 5.1 for DVD-A and SACD on the East coast. I know exactly how bass management works in the very studios that create these mixes.

Back to the reason I started this. I have succesfully modified the 591 card in the 950 so that when bass management is OFF it is really OFF. It is a very simple mod, but requires not drinking any coffee for 24 hours and some extremely proficient soldering skills. In the process of doing this I discovered the original design was even more flawed than the existing one. Originally the circuit was designed so that when BM is OFF, the .1 output consisted of a full range sum of LRCLsRs and the .1. There is an after production mod that defeats the switch for the .1 output. So basically when you flip the ON/OFF switch absolutely nothing happens to the .1 channel.

This mod has given me a true, unaltered 6 channel pass thru. Unforunately, the internal (On screen) BM operates in the same way as the analog pass through. I have no idea how one would go about modding that. The negative effects of it can be greatly reduced, though by setting all the crossover points to 40 cycles. I don't mind that as it actually sounds kind of nice to have a little bump below 40HZ. Keep in mind, this is will not faithfully reproduce the original mix though.

Please, everyone keep in mind that all of this is only ever an issue if you want to use an external bass management solution, and in the end...

IF YOU ARE HAPPY WITH THE WAY YOUR SYSTEM SOUNDS, THERE NO REASON TO LISTEN TO ANYTHING I HAVE SAID HERE.