Cambridge Audio Azur 540A VS. NAD C320 BEE

[topspeed]

The P3 is a very nice pre-amp, Peter. The pictures of the Azur's volume knob make it look like it's a pin light, much like the power and source lights. Alas, it is but a blue piece of plastic.

Digital potentiometers are great in .5dB increments, which is what the Denon does. However, my old PS Audio 4.6 preamp used an analog Nobel attenuator and worked flawlessly for 15 years. I'm an idiot for selling that thing...

The volume pot on my Marantz 2230 is another story. It had to be rebuilt within an inch of its life when I did a full tune-up about 6 months ago. Of course, the old Marantz's are notorious for this problem.

[hertz]

The treble and bass adjustments won't do much damage to the overall tone because decent amp companies like CA, NAD etc.. design them to work at the frequency extremes.So if the music you are hearing does not have much extreme info, it can't do much.This is a good design principle but poorly understood by people used to tone controls found in Japanese amps.
I think the Nad 320bee would have been a better choice because it has been measured to have almost 80 watts per channel although it is speced to 50 watts.I tested it once with my inneficient speakers and it drove them better than a 100 watt nakamichi amp.