Pleary - I also have a 9000ES player and the blue dot 950. One of the reasons I bought the 9000ES was because it's a very good audio player in its own right. Now that I have a projector, I'm also finding out that its has very good video as well (though only in progressive for some reason).

Anyway, I've always found the 950 performance in 2 channel (passthrough or otherwise) to be its achilles heel. The blue dot was a step up but not enough to make the 950 at all competitive with dedicated 2 channel pre's IMO. And as a result I tend not to listen to much music through my system.

However, as Soundhound said, that can be gotten around by getting a decent 2 channel pre and linking it into the system which is exactly what I intend to do. For $500 used, IMO with a little work you can get a 2 channel pre that would outperform $3000 pre/pros for music. And the 950 for HT is excellent.

That said if $3000 was in my budget I'd want to look closer at the Anthem or other units. But given your tastes, you'd probably find the 2 channel even at that price level lacking.

SoundHound - Do you find that the timbral differences through your tube pre on your mains at all distracting? I thought you'd pretty much need to go with a passive or maybe an active with HT bypass?