One point of your post is of high importance. You said "To my ears the system sounds excellent, but I can never seem to be satisfied." The first part of that sentence largely answers your question. The second part is characteristic of most people that take the "audiophile" view of music, which is more about a hobby focused more on comparing equipment and searching for the best set up than about listening to music. The Adcom tuner/preamp, if after careful subjective testing seems better to you than the reciever, will, within less than a year, seem like not the route to take. Rather, a higher end separate tuner and a higher end pre-amp will seem to be a better choice. This tends to go on ad infinitum. Nothing wrong with that - it's a hobby. But as to sound - you find your A/V receiver as a tuner-preamp to be excellent, "excellent" is about as good as it gets. "More excellent" is an odd term.
Preamp or A/V receiver???
Hi. I posted a similar question recently but didn't receive the response I thought I would. I'm wondering if a decent A/V receiver is inferior/superior to a tuner/preamp unit such as the Adcom GTP-500II. I currently use my Onkyo Integra DTR 6.3 home theater receiver as my tuner and preamp. I run my Arcam 8SE hdcd/cd player through the A/V receiver, using GlowPower ZYXT interconnects, to my Adcom GFA-555 amp (200 wpc @ 8 ohms). I use solid Audioquest Hyperlitz speaker cables to connect to my KEF Reference 103/4 tower speakers (4 ohm). To my ears the system sounds excellent, but I can never seem to be satisfied. Because I thought the A/V receiver was likely inferior due to the extra electronics (internal DAC, surround sound components, DTS effects, etc), I purchased a nice Adcom GTP-500II tuner/preamp (with remote) on ebay. Both the Onkyo and the Adcom use gold-plated rca connections, and both offer phono inputs. The Onkyo Integra is Malasyian made (surprisingly), while the Adcom is of course a US product. I haven't received the Adcom preamp yet, but I'm wondering if I made the right decision. Any thoughts??