Affordable Processor with Fabulous 2 Channel ?

The Krell Showcase / HTS range was amazing.  However, they are getting very old and a lot of these units are starting to fail in different areas (digital board, analog channels, etc.).  If you want to take a chance on these, go for it.  But expect a risk.  Also, the Krell units standard behavior for COAX digital input is to down-convert everything to 44.1/48khz sampling rate.

I remember reading that the Classe SSP-800 will convert everything to 96khz, because they believe that is the optimal sampling to feed the specific DAC chips.  The Classe is going to be an excellent item, but expensive again.  Same price range as the Krell S1200 (which is the same generation.

I think I have seen Anthem D2 in the $2k range.  That would probably be your best bet, but I don't know how it behaves with digital coax.

Digital COAX will always give you better 2-channel PCM sound than anything over HDMI.  COAX is better for even old school Dolby Digital / DTS.  The only thing that HDMI audio is good for is the hi-res bluray formats (DTS-HD MA and Dolby TrueHD).

I'm not entirely convinced of everything that caphill is stating.  He does have many good points, but I think it's easy to get hung up on the idea that "costs more = better quality".  The lower priced Marantz processors are very good designs, but they do have their "warm" Marantz sound.  Nothing wrong with that.  Big power supply and lots of localized power supply filtering, discrete analog output stages.

The Meridian / Dataset / Trinnov are all seriously expensive, but they make their money on a combination of perception, DSP processing and upgradability.  As far as I have been able to investigate, both Meridian and Trinnov still use op-amp based analog stages.  The Dataset has massive amounts of DSP (6 individual ARC DSP processing chips), but I don't think they have really put much into the analog stages.  Datasat really came from a movie theater product, which has completely different and complex sound processing requirements.  I remember reading posts from someone who had a Meridian processor and had a Datasat brought in for demo in his house, completely with a Datasat engineer to calibrate.  The end result was nice, but he did not feel that the Datasat offered him anything over the Meridian in sound quality.

The Bryston SP3 does have some pretty nice Class A discrete analog stages, but again it is a different sound.  I have had the SP3 and it is very laid back.  Massive amounts of bass, but the mids/highs just don't have impact.  I think the digital/DAC card is compromised as well - they used an off-the-shelf DSP/DAC card instead of designing their own.  Bryston definitely sounds decent, but not my cup of tea.

In all of my testing, Class A discrete analog stages always were superior over normal op-amp based.  But you need to have a system that has the resolution to show this difference.  That being said, there are also different flavors of Class A sonic signature (Krell vs Bryston vs Pass Labs, etc.).  It really depends on the sound you're looking for.

The Classe SSP and Sigma are very nice processors, but they do use the LM4562 op amp for audio stages (which is same as LM49720).  Although it is in a fully balanced configuration.  I think the Classe stuff would probably be about the best you can get for resolution in an op-amp based processor without going to a Krell design (S1200).

Yep, caphill is correct in that most processors will have a true "analog passthrough" mode.  It's correct that it will not do bass management/crossover, since you are just sending 2-channel analog directly through to the left/right speakers only.  Even Krell has a mode like this.

For HT digital sound quality, caphill may be correct.  The differences in sound quality for 2-channel analog passthrough introduce a new segment:  the analog input stage.  This can actually make or break the sound quality of an HT processor when used as a 2-channel analog preamp.  If caphill is saying that Sigma is better for 2-channel analog, then Classe may have built a better analog input stage.  The SSP-800 was really intended for HT processing, so the analog inputs stages may not be as good.

I do know that the Bryston SP3 uses another set of their discrete Class A circuits for all 8 channels of the input stages, so caphill's comment about the SP3 being great for 2-channel analog audio could be correct. I still don't like the SP3 architecture - where they have a big main power supply, but no localized power supply capacitors around the actual analog circuits.  I have found through R&D that this lack of localized power supply will give you softer mids/highs and a lacking in attack/resolution.  To each their own, though.  One thing I like about Krell Class A circuits is that they have a lot of localized caps (typically soemting like 6 x 47uf capacitors around a single channel audio stage).  This gives them extreme amounts of attack and resolution.  However, the Krell main power supply is typically undersized (especially in their HT processors) so that you get the typical Krell thin/bright sonic signature.

I really don't know if the older McIntosh processors were based on Marantz processors.  I would highly doubt this.  As far as the newer processors (MX122 or 8802 or 8801), they are completely different architectures.  For one, the Marantz does have individual boards that have discrete audio stages for each output channel.  It also has completely different power supply layouts.  McIntosh likes to use R-Core transformers and has different stages of power supply voltage regulation.  As far as I can tell, all McIntosh processors use op amp for analog stages.

If you hunt for pictures, you'll see that the internals are completely different between McIntosh and Marantz units.  It could be that the original firmware of McIntosh was based on a Marantz code.  I have no idea on this.