Any "Deadhead" audiophiles out there to help

FWIW, my recommendation, in order of importance, would be to find either separates or an integrated that is designed for 2 channel first and foremost but offers a home theater by-pass so you can use your receiver and HT amp to drive your HT while you have a very high quality 2 channel rig making music.

In looking for the pre/amp integrated I would be thinking ahead to the type of overall sound you want long-term and consider synergistic amplification and speaker combos so you can come up with a system strategy. There are a lot of different flavors to sample.

I am not sure exactly what you mean by the deadhead sound but it makes me think of box of rain on vinyl. Vinyl to me is a very important part of my audiophile enjoyment and as a matter of fact, I think I might go spin some dead right now. That's me and there is plenty of reading here about the virtues and challenges of vinyl.

Many thanks for the responses..I have been considering an upgrade or additional sub to be added..looking towards REL or SVS..any suggestions there??

Nice system, shakedown street. I used to have the B&K 200.5, the 5 channel version of your amp. B&K is a solid underrated company IMHO. I just bought the newly released Grateful Dead blu-ray movie yesterday. I'll let you know my thoughts after I give it a listen. As far as SACDs, I'm a big fan of the Jerry Garcia and Meryl Saunders disc.

Regarding your system, I think maniac is giving good advice. Going from a pre-pro to a dedicated 2 channel pre-amp with HT bypass was a strong step in the right direction for me, as I prefer to do most of my listening in 2 channel, even for multi-channel recordings. Happy listening!

Dserota...many thanks...please give me some suggestions on a pre pro setup that could not break the bank at $3K or less

You've got more speakers there than I can conceive of!!!!

I assume that you are using your Pioneer 7-ch AV receiver to run some of them, and that you want to continue to do so (zoned music system) - so I wouldn't recommend getting rid of your receiver. Your receiver is essentially a pre/pro with amplifiers built in - though perhaps not the best amplifiers for critical listening. So - I suggest keep your receiver and use it for feeding all those peripheral speakers. Feed the receiver digitally from the Oppo. For critical music listening, either take the analog out from your Oppo or another digital out, and feed it to a 2ch system with a HT passthrough. This could be a good tubed preamp with HTpass feeding to a new amplifier or using 4 channels of your existing B&K (for biamping), or a good integrated. If you take digital out of the Oppo, you'll need a decent DAC as well.

Since your source is purely digital, another option would be to get a DAC/Preamp for your 2ch system with a single set of analog inputs to take music from your Pioneer receiver. You run the Oppo digital into it for 2ch music and the analog into it for HT - just choose a volume setting for analog to set your speaker balance with. Output from the DAC/pre can either go to the B&K amp or a nicer one.

Just some thoughts. Also, if you are used to listening with more than 2 speakers for music, there is no guarantee that you'll like a pure 2ch setup better. In this case, you can be feeding digital to both the 2ch setup and the receiver (controlling the rest of your speakers) and you can manually add in the surround system to supplement the 2ch to get that "concert sound". This is not very conveniant though, as everytime you change volume the balance gets thrown off.

Let us know what you come up with. Best, Peter