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

I did go back online with Canuck and the only pre-amp is the Arcam AVP700. That was the unit that I was originally talking about in my post. There are some very strong points that go along with the unit, and I know that Arcam is clearly not the big-box drivel that fills the vast multitude out there. But as you put it, I will most likely be disapointed for not getting something for more of the long haul, and having no network, blu-ray decoders and limiting myself to 5.1 when I just bought speakers to get 7.1, I think I will be disappointed.

Oh how I would live the AV950, but it's 10k price tag is a bit more than I can handle.

So to bring the price range a bit more closer to reality, I can start to compare against a used Marantz AV7005 that is sort of like the AV7701 but without the 4K video that I will likely never use.

How would one go about quantifying if getting a pre-amp is giving you better sound without trying some blind sound test that would be impossible to to an A/B test as you'd need to unhook, rehook too much between each listen.