What Does 80 Grand Get You Nowadays?

$15K for Yamaha NS-5000’s (with powerful class D amps) is all you need to spend.

@incorrigable 

I haven’t auditioned the NS-5000 yet, but I hear a lot about them and the feedback is always positive. Folks who own them rave about them, including some members here.

This post motivated me to try my $2000 Schiit Wotan amp, that I rave about on this site, on the NS5000. The Wotan is now perfectly broken in. I have owned a few Class D amps and liked the Wotan more. It is a Class AB amp with some warmth and great bass control.

The Wotan immediately sounds different. It sounds pretty good but compared to the CODA #16 that is normally in place it is missing a bit of that rich Class A sound. I think you need some really great amps on the NS5000 to make them shine. I would not use any Class D with these speakers.

BTW - the NS5000 + used CODA #16 cost me a little under $20k.

@kennyc 

Best of luck with your newest acquisition. Interested to hear your review of the Vimberg / Audionet pairing.

You mentioned Audionet Heisenbergs, these are beauties!

@yyzsantabarbara 

It is always good to experiment, even when the results are somewhat predictable :)

Great speakers call for great amps, or at the very least amps with great headroom and vast reserves of power. Too often you see systems’ end sound being unnecessarily throttled by merely adequate amplification.

Of course, listening preferences and musical tastes also play a great role. Blasting symphony or industrial calls for very different gear than light chamber music or unplugged singer-songwriters. That said, gear that is good with the former should be good with the latter, but that probably won't be true the other way around.

@devinplombier I am getting into this comparison thing and trying the Schiit Yggi+ MIB (a warmer DAC over the Schiit Yggi+ OG) with the Wotan and the NS5000. Now this is a bit better sounding and getting closer to the CODA #16 and the Yggi+ OG. 

The best DAC I ever heard in my house on the NS5000 was the Allnic D-15000 Signature OTL/OCL tube DAC.

With the Wotan and NS5000 pairing I am having some crazy thoughts of selling some gear to get that DAC. I am going to give Wotan and NS5000 a few months of listening.

It sounds crazy to say that 80k US $ might not buy you top tier sound today, at least if you still believe the legacy audio press that promotes 1/2 million dollar components, but I keep it simple: I built my systems incrementally over years based on hearing the gear in my room. I had a state of the art system in 1975 when I was around 20 years old--I still run that system (refurbished with some variants) but it has always had limitations in dynamics, sheer dbs and bass. 

I came up when HP first started TAS and though he was a gifted writer and seemed to drift from one favorite to another, I'm not sure there are "absolutes"- sure, unamplified acoustic instruments can sound great (or horrible depending on the room), but that's not a musical diet most of us survive on.

I tend to like small combo jazz recorded in the early '70s-kind of the nadir for LP manufacture in the US--but an awful lot depends on your priorities, doesn't it? As well as size of room, whether you are committing to vinyl (with all the associated gear needed to exploit it effectively), and ultimately, your taste. I can play some records here on the main system that will stun with their sonics (with music I like, not "stereo spectacular" schlock. However, it takes time and effort, including a lot of seat time to get there. That's where the "savings" is- exposure, and if possible in home evaluation for more than a "drive-by."

As to the system the OP described, I haven't a clue what that would sound like without hearing it for myself.