Amplifier suggestions

Please do yourself a favor and audition a Linn 5125 if you can. These can be had for under 3k new and well under 2k used, and are incredible for the price. One knocked the daylights out of the similarly priced McCormack DNA multichannel amp that I recently auditioned in my system. If you are able to borrow one to take home, you will likely also need to borrow speaker wire with BFA plugs, which is a pain (unless you use something like AudioQuest plugs already). I can think of no other downside.

Check out Red Dragon Audio amplifiers.

www.RedDragonAudio.com

Thanks for these suggestions. I see Proceed amps can be had fairly inexpensive. Are they good amps. I will also take a look at Sim Audio an dLinn

The Linn 5125 only weighs in a 11lbs. How is this possible for 125w x 5

Linn uses (an excellent) switch mode power supply, thus no need for the massively heavy torroidal power supplies you find in most higher end amps. (Dynavector also uses a switch mode power supply in their gear that may be even better than Linn's.)

Some people are psychologically attached to massive amps. I personally am not - what matters is how the thing sounds. I also actually prefer my audio gear to be manageable in size. It makes placement more flexible, makes it much easier to work with (e.g., switching out components for A/B's), and has much higher WAF. I don't think I would have a prayer of having my gear in the living room if I were using something like Levinson or Krell.