Ken,

I have an SPL meter... I'm going to perform the same experiment between my Oppo and my 98H... both are feeding into a 68J. I even have the same recording.

There is a dynamic range limiter in the Oppo menu... I have that turned off... I think Jay's unit had it turned off when we unpacked it and fired it up the first time. You should of course check your setup and not assume it's in the same state... it's found in the setup menu under...

Audio Processing
Dolby Pro Logic || Off
Dynamic Range Control Off


We had both Jay's and my unit connected via the 3 SPDIF MCH connection... we had the Oppo's set to downmix to 5.1 (not that we had any 7.1 material). I set both units so that all speakers are considered "Large", 0.0 db trim and 0' distance. You can also find that in the setup menu under...

Audio Processing
Speaker Configuration