Just wondering....let's say the 978 sells for between $1500-$2000. It's feature set looks really good, but do the "higher end" pre/pros like Classe, Bryston, Lexicon etc. offer much better performance & sound quality, or is it really just a case of fancy metal work and the fact they are sold through dealers instead of direct? I know this is hard to answer as the 978 isn't even out yet. I guess what I'm saying is I don't want to sacrifice sound quality, but I don't want to (grossly) overpay, either.
Just to amplify what Gonk said from a different perspective, I moved to a Outlaw 990 prepro from a Theta Casablanca with Superior DACs several years ago. The price difference between the two products was six fold and though I did notice a decrease in sound quality for CD-based content, it was only slight and frankly after a few days forgot about it and simply enjoyed the 990 because I found it to be musically satisfying.
Several years later I'm in the same position with my Denon AVP-A1 prepro. In terms of build, features, and performance I couldn't ask for more and I consider it to be in the reference class as prepros go. It even has a reasonably priced upgrade path for HDMI v1.4. However, I'm going to pounce on the 978 as soon as it becomes available because I'm confident it will deliver 90-95% of the AVP's sound quality at a third of what I expect the AVP to sell for. I can think of a lot things to buy with the difference in savings...
In this spirit, I'm pretty confident the AVP will be the last expensive prepro I own. At this point for me it simply makes more fiscal sense to purchase-and replace as appropriate-prepros in the cost sweet spot. IMO this sweet spot is $1200-$1600 in terms of price vs. performance.
Case in point about value: The first HDMI update for Theta's Casablanca III (and it must be vIII to accept this update) just became available in Q1 of this year. Price for this upgrade: $4995!
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