Upgrade Proceed PDP & PRE to AVP

i have never owned a PDP, so realize that the usefullness of my response may be somewhat limited, but i have owned the proceed avp2 (twice, actually). i found it edgy and bright sounding in my system. in fact, that's how i came to own two of them, as i thought surely after all the hype, something was amiss with the first one i bought. to my disappointment, the second one i bought was no better.

if you want to stick with a pre/pro, i found the meridian 568.2mm and theta casablanca both to be superior to the avp2.

as always, since we all have different gears and different ears, YMMV!

Thanks for the feedback Srosenberg. I took a look here on agon for used Theta Casablanca and just about died when I saw the price. The I realized this was for the III model. I see that the original Casablanca is priced in the ballpark with the AVP on eBay. Hmmm - more reading to be done. Being the Proceed fan on my gear, I suspect that edgy/bright that you heard may either be to my liking or not so evident.

i recently sold my avp s, which i used exclusively for two channel; it was a nice piece but i preferred my more transparent parasound and older hk preamps in my setup. i've never done a direct comparison between the avp s and the pdp/pre, though i've heard the pdp/pre; they seem to share very similar architecture and i'd be surprised if the avp was an significant upgrade. if you're looking at older multichannel processors, i'd also consider B&k ref 50