New Preamp under 1K

Marantz 5007 or 6007 or Denon 3313CI all of which use the more advanced Audyssey MultEQ XT.

The Marantz SR5007 and SR6007 and the Denon 3313 are receivers with preamp outputs. Since receivers usually are much less expensive than equivalent pre/pros with identical features, many people like to use them instead, using external amplifiers instead of the amps built into them.

http://us.marantz.com/us/products/pages/ProductDetails.aspx?CatId=avreceivers&ProductId=SR5007

(That page includes links to their other new equipment.)

http://usa.denon.com/us/product/pages/productdetail.aspx?catid=avreceivers%28denonna%29&pid=avr3313ci%28denonna%29

It's simple economies of scale. Many receivers are made, few pre/pros. It always costs more per unit if you don't make many of them. For example, there are fixed overhead costs (like paying all the engineers involved in designing it). If there are fewer units made, a larger fraction of that fixed cost has to be earned back by each unit sold.

In other words, people buy pre/pros for reasons other than price.

FWIW, Emotiva's new UMC-200 pre/pro has a list price of about $700. It has only 4 HDMI inputs, though.

Pioneer SC-1522-K, just at your price limit at Amazon, 9 channels (plus sub). 8 HDMI in/2 HDMI out. (11 channels of pre-outs, but you can only have 9 active at one time.) It also has 9 channels of amplification, but you wouldn't need to use them.)
Edited by GregLee - 2/15/13 at 10:12pm

The Onkyo NR818 price is well within the OP's budget at the moment. Its probably the cheapest AVR on the market with Audyssey XT32. The best commercial version of Audyssey currently offered.

Try the users manual on the Onkyo web site: