I have this thing I want to do in my office once my car is paid off. Basically I need an affordable (500 or less) receiver with all the preouts. I plan on getting a few sets of Vanatoo t0s and mount them in the corners of my office with another pair in front of me on my desk. Ideally I’d like to hide the receiver away and use something like the ifi zen dac to preout to that to control the volume (don’t know of that’s possible but thought it’d be cool) basically I need a receiver of some sort with a bunch of preouts and the ability to use a separate preout to control the receiver. Sure I could just use a remote to do it but I’d prefer a clean setup without having to have a big ol remote laying around. Any help would be most appropriated. Maybe you know of a simpler/better way to make this happen?
So you could perhaps use a minidsp to get this done, but I don’t know a ton about them
Perhaps looking for a used emotiva MC-700 or other preamp/processor would be worthwhile?
They also have multi channel dacs too I believe
Omg. Guess who forgot minidsp exists? That’s right it’s me. I was hoping to hide away a giant receiver but with that I could strap it under my table. They have rca in so I should be able to preout to them right? That has more to do with whatever headphone amp or whatever I hook up to it, not the minidsp itself right? At least that is my assumption. Thanks for the help as usual my friend 
I’m not aware of a new receiver out there at $500 that has full preouts. There aren’t many pre/pros out there for that price either.
It would be cool if Mini-DSP introduced a surround processor that had all the latest Dolby and DTS processing, along with room correction, and then digital outputs for all the channels (or at least all pairs of channels). That would be cool.