With very very few exceptions, surround receivers and processors only do bass management in the digital domain. That's the nature of the beast. If you want 2.1 with the BDP-95's internal DACs, then you need to either use the player's 7.1 analog output and set the fronts to "small" - at which point the player's bass management will be enabled - or you need an outboard analog bass management tool such as the ICBM-1 (or the RR2150 receiver). Using the 7.1 output from the player will give you bass management, and if you disable Pro Logic II it will preserve the stereo mix (so no signal for center or surrounds).


It depends on a lot of factors. HDMI can pass 24/192 PCM stereo. Will the player output it? (Some may not.) Will the processor or receiver retain a 24/192 signal throughout the digital signal path, including room correction, bass management, surround processing, etc.? (Some may not.)

What 24/192 sources do you have? Most lossless audio on Blu-ray is not 24/192. Most of it is either 24/48 or 24/96. They are still all lossless, whether TrueHD, DTS-HD Master Audio, uncompressed PCM, MLP, or DSD.


I would argue that there is no single answer here, which is part of the problem. It's a matter of how far you plan to go when chasing optimal performance. You can upgrade your processor to something with HDMI and a really excellent analog section, or you can keep your non-HDMI processor and upgrade your source(s). Either approach will work. For example, you can use the BDP-95 with a non-HDMI processor and get tremendous analog audio performance. We don't know how the Model 978 or Model 998 will compare sonically because the don't exist, and I hate the idea of guessing how it will sound based on some newsletters - that's a dangerous road to go down. Would a used BDP-80 paired with a Model 978 sound as good as a BDP-95 paired with a Model 990? Nobody can know.

If you have or are going to get a BDP-95, I would suggest connecting both the 7.1 analog output (which you need for multichannel sources like Blu-ray, SACD, and DVD-A) and the stereo analog output to your existing processor, then compare the two with CD's to see which you prefer: the stereo output (no bass management, ESS eight-channel DAC configured with four channels each for left and right) or the 7.1 output (bass management, same model of ESS DAC using one channel per output channel). Be sure to set your processor so the stereo analog input is not being converted to digital. (By the way, what processor do you have right now?) I'd also suggest setting the BDP-95's SACD output to "DSD" so that the DSD signal goes straight to the DAC, although this means that you won't have bass management with SACD's.