Axiom Home Page Forums General Discussion Home Theater Modern Pre-Amp or get an older used one

Call it upgrade-itus. I have a Pioneer receiver that I am basically using as a pre-amp. It works and sounds OK. I will say that I sort of prefer the sound of my older Nakamichi AV1 but it won't work with my LFR1100 speakers as it has no pre-out.

I have just purchased a set of M3 wall mount speakers for my rear surroud, and have QS8's for the surround, LFR1100 + VP180. I still have left over energy take5 micro bookshelf speakers left over that could be front and rear hight speakers for 11.1 but would need a few more amps to get them working.

I am not obsessed with going Atmos or DTS-X. I just want to get the best sound possible out of what I have. I have seen an older Arcam AVR pre-amp that does 7.1 sort of. (Dolby and DTS ES) so it can artifically make the rear and side surrounds work together, but doesn't support true 7.1 DTS-MA or Dolby TrueHD. But the price is affordable. Will be giving up some of the fun parts like Apple Airplay or DLNA. Will only get 2 hdmi ports and have fun getting the audio back from the TV as there is no ARC. Also no Audyssey or any room sound correction.

To get those niceties it will cost me a good $1100-1800 to get a new (refurb) Marrantz AV7701 or AV8801 pre-amp.

I could spend the money to get it, but the kicker is that I don't know if I will be getting that hopeful bump in sound quality to justify the expense. Having sunk close to $7k already in audio equipment for speakers and amps.. I feel I have had some improvement from my old Energy C3 speakers with the Take5 as surrounds.. but I feel like it's an urge to get even better. Or is it just that I think that the equipment that I have could do so much more, and wonder if the receiver is my perpetual weakest link.

HELP!