"Maybe some players simultaneously output to both, that would be ideal and great for comparisons."

I'd have to check some HD players to be sure but for plain jane DD/DTS I'd be surprised if the player couldn't have analog outputs active and send bitstream DD/DTS out its SPDIF output at the same time. Regular DVD players with analog outputs have been doing that for a very long time. They just pipe the bitstream to the SPDIF transmitter while also decoding that format in their DSP to feed PCM to the DACs.

Shawn

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