Looking for an AV pre-amp to mate with the NAD S250 5-ch amp. The S170i is from the matching Silver series line, but the T163 is newer. List price of the S170i is considerably higher, but my dealer can sell me a b-stock unit for the same price as the T163. Will the older S170i offer superior sound owing to its Silver series breeding, or is the T163 with updated electronics the way to go?? I should state that the application is solely for home theater (I have a separate 2-ch music system), but I do watch HD and DVD concerts from time-to-time. I don't care about DPL IIx since I'm still at 5.1.
One thing I noticed is that the S170i uses 24-bit/96 kHz sampling rate DACs, while the T163 uses 24-bit/192 kHz DACs. (Plus, it seems that every other AV processor out there today is sampling at 192 kHz.) Is this a glaring deficiency in the S170i?
Interesting, I have a S250 power amp, and compared it recently to the new T series multi-channel amp, I could not tell any difference in sound quality, so the chances are the T163 is built on the same platform/technology as the S170i, I think you would need to listen, I am looking for an S170i, as I have the old S170, does your dealer have any more S170i unit's can you provide contact please.