My Impressions after two movies, one music dvd, one cd and bluetooth through my iphone :

Setup was fairly painless, though i have yet to connect 3.5 mono IR cables to the 976 and my Oppo BD-103.
Have not done any EQ yet and i may not. I may play with it one day, but my dedicated theater room is soundproofed and acoustically treated with GIK products and i cannot imagine it sounding better than it does.

I am coming from a 950 processor that has served me well for a long time - almost 12 years now! I ran the speaker RCA signals through an ICBM bass manager to the amps, setting all crossover activity in the 950 and oppo to large, meaning no crossover processing. This worked very well. All speakers are custom made using very high quality Dynaudio drivers from Denmark.

Now, im using the 976 crossover, the ICBM is gone, and with analog 7.1 outputs from the Oppo, im using the crossover in that. Simpler and less cables, but i love that ICBM !

HDMI Video signal to my Epson projector is now switched by the 976, where before i had it direct. There is no degradation that i can detect, but im more about audio, even though Im 57 now and my hearing is not great !

First movie i watched is well known to me - The Bourne Legacy.
Opening scene with Jeremy Renners character coming out of the freezing Alaskan river, when he is standing around the campfire I can hear the subtle sounds of the fire crackling and popping - never heard that before!
Next scene, the reporter is shot. Later Renner fires his rifle three times in the air, with accompanying echoes around the mountainside. The immediate sensory impact of these high powered rifle shots made me jump every time. Ive never heard those shots have such intense in-your-face sound. Every rifle shot after that impressed me. The motorcycle chase scene at the end was screaming around my room !
Very impressive, but this is DTS Master Audio 7.1 in and out, which my 950 couldnt do.

Next i watched/listened to Phil Collins First Farewell tour, recorded Live at Bercy, Paris. A 2004 release with DTS 5.1 being the highest level of audio available.
This concert disc set is also well known to me, and to be honest, i didnt detect much improvement listening to the DTS track over what my 950 could do. BUT, when i selected DIRECT 7.1 using the analog outputs from the OPPO, things really came to life far beyond the 950s ability. Vocal harmonies were the best ive heard anywhere period !
The Duet with Amy Keys "Separate Lives" was spine tingling, made especially so by Keys incredible voice and vocal range.
With the analog sound, you can just FEEL that nothing beyond the inital D/A is being added or subtracted or compressed. Extremely impressive lifelike sound.

I next listened to a CD through an excellent Marantz CD63SE player using the coaxial digital output. But it was too late for anything else to compare favorably to the Phil Collins disc. I should have done this first.
Same with Bluetooth. Sync issues were non problematic, but the sound was very so-so ! No better than i expected.

Ive been looking for a processor to upgrade from the 950 for some time and was looking to spend quite a bit more than the 976, but i wanted to stay with 7.2. Im glad i made this move.