Sound advice. I will experiment with a few other blu rays and report back.

My axiom m80's will be arriving in the next week or two and will be replacing my cerwin vega d8's.

Hopefully I can iron this all out

well, not happy with the Marantz. It's not just this problem I'm encountering. I like to tweak things and have lots of options. The Marantz was the wrong choice for me.

I'm going to exchange it for a good deal on a pioneer sc61. I bought the Marantz for 700. I'll be returning it and paying a 250 difference to walk out with the pioneer sc-61.

I think this amplifier will suit my tastes better

I'll be interested to see how you like it. I have the Pio SC-67 and I'm loving it.

well, I went and got it and hooked it up a couple of hours ago.

I already love it. I very much prefer it already over the Marantz. I went through all the Marantz's menus and features and it felt shallow and left something to be desired, for a "tweaker" like me. I can tell I'll be reading manuals and playing around with all the different goodies in this one for awhile.

I just couldn't get the Marantz to sound the way I wanted to with music, which is my primary listening. it didn't have the "oomph" that I enjoyed with the old Yamaha. This Pioneer does that but much better quality. When running in pure direct mode compared to the Marantz, it's night and day better for me.

I also replaced a crappy hdmi cable that I had running from the ps3 to the receiver...I figured that might have been part of my earlier problems. it was a cheapy that didn't seat well at all and had to wiggle it the first time I started up the Marantz to get picture to come through.

I replayed the scenes that caused horrible distortion and nothing now. So I'm happy. When the kids go to bed I'm going to run the MCACC and really play with it

And my m80's should be here next week.