Georgie:Thanks mjwarburton. I've never really looked into separates before, but after trying to educate myself a bit it sounds like having a separate pre-pro would offer better sound because space isn't taken up by the internal amp that a receiver has so it can be used for other things. So then my question is, would using a regular receiver (e.g., the denon 3808) with an amp for the speakers (like the emotiva xpa-5) be the same doing separates? When looking online at the emotiva umc1 link you provided and reading in avsforum about the outlaw 990 and the new outlaw 997 coming out, it seems like the denon 3808 still has features the others don't - and the outlaw actually costs more. So is there an advantage to getting a dedicated pre-pro that I'm not thinking about rather than getting a receiver and running the speakers with a separate amp. Sorry if that's a stupid question. I'm an audio geek wannabe, but am not quite there yet (as I'm sure you all can tell).
One advantage is that a dedicated pre-pro generally has higher quality digital-to-analogue converters which leads to higher quality (closer to the source) sound. Another (theoretical, in my opinion) advantage is, without an internal amp, there is less circuitry to cause signal interference in a pre/pro. A green advantage of going with true separates instead of using a receiver as a pre/pro is that it minimizes wasting energy. When you use a receiver as a pre/pro, the receiver's amps are still active and drawing current, even if the speakers aren't hooked up to it. Hope that helps.
-Nick