Are there NO 'Recommended' AVR/AVP pre pros? (Or am I missing something?)

[Gorgonzola]

A "pre pro" seems like a great idea prima facie in that (i) you have your choice of power amps, and (b) you ought to save a little money on the processor itself given it doesn't include power amps. It's certainly what I would like but:

• But most pre pros (or AVRs with pre-out) seem to be aimed up market whereas I'd like to spend US2000 or preferably less
• Apparently no models reviewed here at ASR are recommendable.

Personally I don't need anything excessively fancy:

• 5.1 channels with basic bass management
• Room correction, maybe Dirac
• Analog line output, preferably balanced+differential
• HDMI 4K through put
• USB input from computer and or from, e.g., Raspberry Pi stream; (built-in streaming such as Volumio, BluOS, isn't essential)
• On-screen setup, (pretty standard these days)
• Effective remote control unit.

 

[abdo123]

Get whatever Denon model you can afford and turn off the amplification where you don't need it.

 

[aalpar]

That is the case. The Denons listed are you best bet, and as abd0123 stated, turn off the amps.

I'll speculate that either:
- high quality 5.1/HDMI commodity chipsets are too expensive for low volume production (plus there's licensing costs)
- high quality commodity multi-channel chipsets don't exist, which leaves the design of good chipsets to manufacturers with good in-house engineering

Good amplifiers are inexpensive to design and build, so other than shipping weight, there's probably no much motivation to leave them out. Putting them in probably means higher volume sales. Plus, it seems, all the multi-channel audio formats are a moving target - if a manufacturer invests in engineering one set of chips, what guaranties its going to be relevant next year.

I've done enough audio engineering to know that at higher bandwidths there can be a lot of internally generated noise that can be difficult to control. Theres also a considerable amount of art in "correct" decoding - reconstruction of the intended signal at the border of the designed bandwith never works out as easily as all the in-band stuff. At the edge of the band, eventually you need to consider human perception which might be too "woo" for many engineering departments.

 

[Gorgonzola]

So thanks indeed for these inputs.

Yes, a Denon with 'Pre Outputs' would seem to be viable option rather than true 'pre/pro' unit; e.g. the AVR X3700H, would seem to fit the bill and price range at Can$1800; (although that Denon uses Audyssey rather than Dirac for EQ).