MC-1 or Ref 30


Which pre pro would you recommend for use with multiple Bryston amps and Paradigm Reference Studio 100 speakers.
50% music and 50% movies. B&K Reference 30 and Lexicon MC-1 are the two that I'm looking at. What do you think?
mborner
Thank you for all of you input folks. Lakerat2124, Arealavfan, Argent, and rmml, it's always good to hear everyone speak well of the unit I was leaning toward. I believe my mind is made up.
MC-1 digitizes all analog inputs--that should be all you need to know if you care about music.

B&K has had reliability problems in the past(their A/V receivers were notorious in this regard), but they may be better now as it's been about 3 years since I sold'em. Just something to be aware of--otherwise I hold B&K stuff in high regard.

That said I have to agree with Argent. If you can swing it the SP1 seems to be the obvious choice, especially considering your amps but also 2-channel performance.

There is one other option that is actually what I'd do. You can buy a relatively inexpensive Denon receiver to handle the surround processing duties only(still using your Brystons for amps) that'll do fine for movies and buy a high-quality 2-channel preamp with a home theater passthrough that will seamlessly integrate with the Denon. This way you get the best possible sound quality for critical stereo listening while maintaining upgrade flexibility(just flip out the Denon when surround formats change), and all this at a lower cost than a higher-end pre/pro--best of both worlds, except you've got two boxes instead of one. Excellent solid state stereo preamps with HT passthroughs can be had from Adcom(GFA-750), McCormack(RLD-1), Levinson, while tubes offer Sonic Frontiers, BAT, AR, Rogue, Conrad-Johnson, VAC(or VTL, not sure which). Anyway, just another option to consider. Best of luck.

Tim
I'd advise against the Denon receiver as a processor. I did this for a while w/ separate amps and a separate 2-channel pre-amp for music. When I got my B&K ref 30 I noticed a HUGE difference from the Denon on soundtracks (and the dolby pro-logic decoding in particular). Not just a slight difference -- quite noticable. If you read all the reviews of the Ref 30 every one of them remarks how great it is w/ soundtracks, and my experience has been consistent w/ those remarks.