Doug, John- When I refer to analog interconnects, I'm referring to passing analog signal from source player to the 970's 7.1 audio inputs (marked "DVD player" on the back of the unit). Also, Doug when you used digital inputs, did you use the optical or coaxial in? Coaxial is always going to sound better, due to the fact that all optical cables leak some signal (granted not all sources have coaxial option-my satillite box is an example). My experience so far with my source player (and I will need to A/B test the 970 in my system to know if this also applys to the 970) is to let the source do the decoding and pass the analog signal produced through the shortest path to the speakers (i.e. without any additional digital to analog conversion). There are lots of times you can't do this (many sources don't have analog output or bass management), but if you can avoid this, then it will most likely just sound better than going through another DAC cycle.