After a busy few weeks, I got to set up my new 976 and Oppo 203.
I did the auto set up with the mic for now. It set my speaker levels and distance, there were no phase problems.
The distance was pretty accurate.

I played a couple of movies with both Dolby Atmos tracks and DTS-X tracks...Mad Max and Passengers both have the Dolby Atmos tracks. The 976 plays the core 7.1 channels of Dolby TrueHD
Coming from a 975, the sound is everything I would expect it to be, very impressive.
I also played Lone Survivor with a DTS-X track and that played the 7.1 DTS HDMA core. This sounds great as well.

As for the remote, I don't have a complaint with any of the functionality. I sit a bit towards the left of my room that's 26 x 13. The system is off to the right front corner of the room and I'm usually about 12-14 feet away.

The rear of the area is open to the next room where I can stand even further back than 26 feet- closer to 30 feet away with no problems controlling the 976. I do have a Harmony 750 that I'll be using, but I wanted to try the remote given all that I've read on the Saloon. Plus, I'd rather use the Outlaw remote to do any set up stuff.
I haven't delved into the EQ or REW yet. Need to find the time for that and figure out the best way to accomplish this.

The BlueTooth pairs quite easily and the sound is great enough for me with excellent range.

As for playing music through the new Oppo, I played a few cd's. Some were, commercially mastered, and some I made from my Yamaha CD recorder.

I have a 2 CD set of "Masters of Reggae" that I popped in. The 976 does show the boxes on the right side disappear and re-appear with the track change, but this is quite fast and I don't miss the beginning of any of the tracks, not like what I experienced with the 975. The 976 seems to re-acquire the next track immediately.

As for a sample CD I made, some of it is from live recordings that will continue from one track to the next with the applause helping to lead into the next song. There is no loss of signal with this transition.

I loaded a playlist on a USB stick and played it from the Oppo.
I do hear, on some of the tracks, a slight (quick) fade-in at the start. This depends on the track though, as on some of the songs, it's not evident.

So far, I must say the 976 is performing as I'd hoped it would. I hadn't listened to music much with the 975, so
after reading others experience in the saloon, I wanted to try to duplicate what they were describing.

The experience I have from the 975 to the 976 with playing music via HDMI is like night and day, as I would miss almost the first musical note or word of dialog, due to being about a second late with the 975.

Not so with the 976.

This is a great piece of equipment Outlaw has produced. It may be in my system for a long time, given I have no interest in an Atmos system.