Discrete Advise Needed

[Marcsten]

Here's a question. I currently use my Audionics tate as my control center. For a pre-amp, I use a unit that I got a tech at Audionics to put together for me involving a BT2 preamp board running full all the time. It then went into my tate, which decoded and had balance and volume. This is fine, but for discrete, I had no way to control the volume or balance that came out of my quad tape deck or cd4 demodulator, since the discrete inputs on the tate are pass through only and do not allow for any processing. So the Audionics tech built 4 inputs and 4 outputs into the preamp that ran independent of the preamp stage with volume and balance contols. This has worked well for the past 20 plus years, but now I fear that this setup is failing due to age. The discrete setup particularly has required some bizarre settings in order to maintain accurate balance. Besides, I am ready for a better (newer) preamp.
SO what do I do to control the discrete part of the setup? Is there any 4 channel preamp setup available? How about a dts setup? My only other thought was to pick up an old sqd 2020 for just the discrete control, Any ideas?
Marc

 

[Quadzilla]

Marc, I use the 5.1 channel input of a Pioneer Elite series receiver and its preamp outputs to feed 3 Bryston 2B-LP power amps. All of my quad stuff connects to 3 DBX 200 units that connect to the Pioneer. The Pioneer's volume control then controls all channels.

It also has DTS and DD built-in and lots of digital connections, but I use an Audio Alchemy DDE unit to switch between the digital outputs of my DVD-A and SACD players so that I can feed a single outboard DAC unit. The Pioneer receiver is quite good as a preamp (it even has a phono stage too), but it is quite sad as a power amplifier goes ... that is why I chose the separates. Cheers, Mike.