Proceed AVP-S price drop?

[utkinpol]

Hi,

I see quite some amount of those units for sale on Ebay and on lists with dramatic price drops down to $500-$700 in average.
Is this once considered quite remarkable unit still good for a setup with 2channel and sub?

I have 3 digital sources plus Sony dvp-s7700 that I want to use as a transport, amp is rotel rb1080 and speakers are b&w 805s connected by monster mcx-2s and audioquest type 4, sub is JBL L8400P.

Currently as a pre-amp I use old yamaha rx-v795a. Store owner who sold me that Rotel amp told me to be quite accurate in my assumptions about pre-amps since most budget and initial quality integrated units may not be dramatically better (I assume it was his politically correct way to say - your incompetent years will hear no difference whatsoever) so I was thinking about getting something in (reasonably) better class to have 2 coax and 2 optical inputs and use this pre-amp mostly as a DAC conected via balanced outputs to rotel rb1080.

So, how good old 6-8 years old Proceed AVP-S for abstract $700 will be compared to Yamaha`s DAC? On paper it is still the same 24 bit 96kHz.

What is it in the reality? Or should I, say, bite the bullet and get something like upcoming Parasound C3? I am quite open minded, but do not really want to spend a fortune - all I want is a modestly priced relatively decent system I can enjoy without any extra hype.

I do not care about video much, but an ability to use equipment with new standards is always a welcome - I have heard that new blue-ray and any DVD players with hdmi 1.3 will be quite common soon and dvp-s7700 will not live forever, right?

Please advice, it is an extremely difficult for me to navigate in all those piles of new stuff.

[utkinpol]

Anybody?

[georgev]

The proceed will be much more superior to the Yammie both for surround sound and for stereo.
It will not accept HDMI inputs as it does not have them but I think it does have the multichannel analog inputs.
You will then need a player that will output via those. It will not internally decode the new surround formats so your source should be able to do that.
But sonically the proceed will trounce your Yammie.
Hope this helps.
George.