Hi, everyone,

I just got my new 970!! I'd been looking forward to it for several months, but now it's here, and I'm seriously excited! I don't do major upgrades very often, so when I do it tends to be in big jumps. In this case, I'm going from an early 90's Pro Logic decoder with an all-audio system and pretty awful speakers (homemade mains, which were okay back when I made them - in the 1980's!! - and no decent center or surrounds). Now I'm running B&W 600 series center and mains, and Def Tech surrounds ... and an Outlaw Audio 970 Pre/pro! Oh, yeah, and the Oppo OPDV971H DVD player and Panasonic AE900U HD front projector.

I got most of it hooked up last night (still need a couple more digital cables ...), and tonight I get to start configuration and callibration ... going to be a fun weekend.

Oh, yeah, I did have an actual question: The Oppo DVD player has separate L/R outputs for downmixed stereo (in addition to the L/R outputs that go with the 5.1 outputs for DVD-A/SACD), which are what I was using for my Pro Logic setup as well as for two-channel audio. Now that I can run the digital output for audio, I'm wondering if there's any need to use the stereo analog L/R outputs any more (not the 5.1 outs - I'll use those for DVD-A - I'm just wondering about plain stereo). I suppose I could do that if for some reason I decided that I like the D/A conversion in the DVD player better than in the 970 (unlikely, I'd think), but is there any other reason I might want to do this?

Thanks in advance, and I'm glad to be here amongst the renegades!

- Bruce