My patience has never been great. I have an old sony preamp - 6 years old - still not shabby and an even older one - about 15 years old. The 15 year old one has some issues with volume control at this point to I'd love to upgrade my living room one and shuffle it to my bedroom. I have some nice amps so I'm all set there.
Unfortunately still no word from Rotel, Sherwood, etc on new preamps. Sony is out of the game for good from what I've heard and Denon is still toying with coming back to the preamp scene from what I've heard. I'd buy a Denon tomorrow if I could get one that supported DTS HD and DD TrueHD.
I hate the idea of hooking a denon receiver in to get the bang for the buck since it draws unnecessary power, creates an unnecessary circuit for sound degradation and it generates a good deal of unnecessary heat. Hopefully Denon will get back into the game as I'd say they are in the pretty good bang for the buck category - not the best on all things but pretty darn good overall.
