Great point. My pre and pro are 15 years old and without HDMI but if something was a flagship product by a manufacturer in its day even when discontinued will not for any reason degrade quality in any way!
The most idiotic habit one can have is the assumption that human ears change because gear is changed in this industry. Gear can improve but our ears generally degrade over the years.
It’s easy to get carried away caught up with new formats promising better sound quality however this industry in general exhausted its VHS quality and promised DVD to replace it which now is the dinosaur being replaced by Bluray which is now old in the light of 4K.
As with any industry if we were just given the bloody 4K, lossless formats with gear designed to play them we wouldn’t need to constantly chase after the pot at the rainbows end.
How many versions of a movie do we really need in order to see it more than once??
Remember in order for a manufacturer to compete and survive in the tech age the last thing they would do is skip 40+ years of development and say here is the best we have to offer, where is the profit in that!
AVR and the Pre/Pros aren’t much different than each other in the overall end result unless you talk about the amp.
Not to many AVRs offer 1000 watts per channel RMS with 2000 watt peak stable into 2 ohms at least I’ve never heard of it but being honest nor have I researched that thought!
The need for such amp power is a personal one but not many consumers are into speakers in the price range worthy of a single mono-block outputting 1000 watts RMS either!
My personal taste is separates and regardless of the cost difference including all the wires connected between the units in my dedicated HT separates is to me no different than my 5 channel amp and sealed sub with its own amp!
Why should we choose separation instead of integrated? Dedicated purpose and power Supply. At the end of the day that may not sound like much but in an argument for separates but consider this my example below:
If I worked my chest today in the morning and waited until the Evening to train my back it sounds great in theory however the body has one digestive system with a limited capacity to extract energy from the food I eat.
Since I used energy earlier in the day that must be restored before adapting and growth can occur and by training again later there ends up being less energy for repairs and growth as a result of placing a larger deficit on the shoulders of the digestive system.
How you may ask is that example able to shed light on an audio setup?
Simple, unless the power supply is adequate to feed both the processing unit and separate amp channels there must be a give and take! That means with separate units they can pig out but together one must eat first leaving the left overs to the secondary feeder!
That’s the main reason a sub can be a beast since it shared no power if connected to a dedicated line with its own amp!
The key word “DEDICATED!” Having a singular purpose meant to whip ass
