AjayM
Screenwriter
- Joined
- Aug 22, 2000
- Messages
- 1,224
The formats are still evolving. Spending a lot of money on a separate pre-pro may turn out to be an unwise investment. If you had put in $3K for a state-of-the-art pre-pro a couple of years ago, you may feel the need to upgrade, with the new 6.1, 7.1, DPLII, etc. demanding your attention, and the wide availabilty of DVD-Audio and SACD programming making your 2-year-old pre-pro (with less than 2 multi-channel inputs) somewhat obsolete.
The formats will always be evolving, there is no getting around that. You may be lucky to be an early adopter of a format that sticks around for a couple of years, but it's still going to change. However if you drop $3k for a pre-pro, you will have some form of an upgrade path. Anthem, B&K, Lexicon, etc all have upgrade programs.
There's another thread around here that is talking about buying an old Lexicon MC1 and a Sony 5.1 pre-amp to have a fully featured, up to date for formats and now you have everything needed for dual 5.1 inputs, full and real analog bypass, etc. And you can probably pick it up for just under $2k.
How about a B&K Reference 20 pre-pro, still a good pre-pro now, it's just missing the newer formats and a 5.1 inputs. You can pick these up for around $800-900 today, then send it to B&K and upgrade it Reference 30 standards (missing the component switching and THX certification) for $800.
Andrew