Update:

After some research, I settled on a Yamaha CX-A5000 as my pre. Since this is going to be a 50/50 HT and music. ESS SABRE32 is too good to pass up. I also like the fact yamaha runs cool. This is also important as my Onkyo runs hot. The only weakness is that sub doesn't have XLR output like AV8801 does. Not a big deal, but it would have been nice to have that as I do not plan to . The room correction software that comes with yamaha also is somewhat controversial. For fine tuning I plan to use REW with MiniDSP UMIK-1 anyway.

-Howard