Bryston SP2 vs Meridian 861

The reason for my asking is that I would prefer having 1 preamp that does both music and movies. Yet I am an audiophile at heart, wanting to extract that extra drop of sound out of a musical piece. I can have separate components for music and for movies if I reluctantly must.

So does this mean the 861 is a mediocre music preamp? Or perhaps the SP2 is not close to the best music preamp out there either.

At the other extreme, is the SP2 a rather lousy surround sound processor that you should not consider it for watching movies.

I can go either analog or digital. It's the ultimate sound realism of a musical piece, and the stereo separation/clarity for a surround sound that I am after. Thank you.

Do you have analog sources that you must use? Such might be an SACD player, a turntable, an FM tuner? If not, then I'd go with the Meridian.

Kal

My current CD/DVD player is the Meridian 596 which can be plugged into the 861 nicely to produce some kind of a musical performance and the expected excellent surround sound quality. Or its 192-khz analog output can be plugged into an analog preamp such as the SP2, while its digital output would go into the digital surround sound of the SP2. However I am think of the long term, which is CD-quality music stored on a hard drive. So eventually I would have to buy a DAC capable of wirelessly receiving the musical signal. I am not going to buy any wireless equipment nor any DAC until the technology can achieve "that" level of audiophile performance. But you know the technology is only a few years away. In short, any analog preamp is still needed, unless I don't think straight here.

So, you don't need an analog input, right? So?

Kal

Not thinking straight :), the wireless interface can be plugged into the 861 digitally!!!!, you can do this now! The great thing about ones and zeroes is if you don't lose any then the quality is there already any jitter will be removed by the 861's fifo buffers.....

Might be 5 years from now your speakers will be digital too, so their will be no need for a "DAC" till the speaker drivers.