Looking for Pre/Pro with great 2 ch sound

If you get a CasaNova, make sure it has DD, DTS, and most people prefer Circle Surround. Balanced outputs for L-R-C, is a very nice option too.

I think the Casanova is the way to go. 2 channel listening is awesome, although I think the processing for home theater lacks a little. For the price you can pick them up for, I do not think there is a better product for the money.

I agree 100% with friz1313 with the Theta Casa Nova recommendation; System did not loose much when it went from a Klyne front end to the casa nova; probally due to the ability to have so much speaker adjustments (phase,crossover type,crossover freq and slope) having these selections resulted being able to custom taylor your system for its listening enviroment.
Having the circle surround option is very well worth it,very enjoyable.

A little more background on this question: I have Linn Ninka speakers and I'm considering going to Linn amplifiers (Linn 5125 multichannel amp) to actively power the speakers. On other threads everyone says to pair Linn amps and speakers with Linn preamps. The problem is the Linn multichannel controllers are either really expensive or out of date (like the 5103).

Would the Theta or Proceed pair well with Linn amps? The other option is to use a pre-pro for multichannel listening and a Linn preamp for two channel with pass through for multichannel. This just seems needlessly complex. Any further thoughts?

A Meridian 568 or 568.2 would be an excellent used processor to get.

Good Luck