Anything better than Proceed?

You might try giving McCormack a try.

i own the system you have in question. In my personal opinion it sounds unbelievable. If you only are going for home theater and music is not that great of a concern I would also audition the krell setup. There is definately a little more exitement there but I listen to alot of music and the krell hurts my ears after a while.For the money the only thing close for both i think is the meridian and the new 568 is 1500 more and has no video switching. The AVP is simpler to use than any other piece I have ever owned or setup. The fact that the front three channels are balanced is also great, especially for music. The amps have limitless power I run a set of revel salons and I still think the speakers limit the power of the amp. The HPA's have great detail and soundstage. For a while I thought that the system wasn't sounding the way I wanted to and I was thinking about changing processors but before I did I talked to mjy sales rep and he analyzed my room acoustics and fixed some inherent problems in it and that was night and day the sound is what I wanted in spades. In my opinion go with an AMP5 and spend the rest getting your room fixed it makes that big of a difference.

I have a Cal Audio 2500, and can say that its DA for straight stereo is much better than I exoect it. I am comparing it to a tweaked Wadia 270 w/Wadia 27ix and the Cal audio has a Perpetual Technology upsampler in front. The Wadia combination is better, but no that much better, and the price difference is a lot. For movies I believe you will be hard press to find a better unit. As far as upgradability I question any companies ability to keep up with technology.

That's great news that the Perpetual tech upsampler works well with the Cal SSP-2500, I will try one. I was considering the 2500 series dvd player since it also upsamples but really wanted to hold out for one that did dvd-a as well. Do you won the video switcher?

All good responses. I find my Krell HTS and Krell amps with all Aerial speakers to be outstanding on surround and stereo. The HT world is in a constant state of change, so I think it's important to ensure that you also have a good stereo setup; I'm currently using a Meridian for that. Still, I can see changing the preamps within a year.