Leaning towards tubes, but need help long

since you list orchestral as one of the genres you like, make sure you get an amp with some power, not a single-ended triode. other things you should be aware of are the sonic signatures of the different gear, ranging from quite neutral to quite warm/euphonic/"tube-y". if possible, you should audition a few different brands to see which sound you like.
if you don't have phono, that will make your search cheaper and easier.
I would second the mac recommendation - if you buy it used, you will lose little if anything on resale as these really hold their value - but there are a lot of decently powered integrateds out there: AR made one, CJ made at least one, Cary has a few, lots of new Chinese ones.
the type of tube will have a big impact on the sound, so buying something that can use different tubes will give you more flexibility down the road.
NOS (new old stock) tubes will pop up as an option down the road too. certain popular tubes (KT-88, 6sn7), as currently produced, are not as good as the older (40's - 70's) ones were, so there's an obvious - if expensive - way to improve the sound once you own the amp.
based on what you're saying, tubes are the right choice. you can't beat them for openness and air.
p.s.you asked about finickiness. preamps are pretty much no-maintenance: if you get scratchiness or 'tube rush', you just figure out where it's affected (L or R, CD or tuner, etc., then switch out suspect tubes until you locate the problem - no biasing required. with power tubes, you can expect - especially with current production tubes - to have the occasional loud noise, glowing tube (prior to tube failure), etc. you simply need to keep an extra set of tubes so you can keep listening. with NOS tubes, reliability is less of a factor.

hope this helps.

Thanks for the input. A couple of dumb questions for musicslug. What is single-ended triode, and is 50W per channel (the Manley) enough? I don't usually play music at especially high volumes. In terms of swapping out tubes, what's expensive -- hundreds or thousands? If it's the latter, I'm not sure that's a road I'd want to take. Thanks again!

Blue Circle NSCS.
Do some research. This is a great unit.
And of course this is biased. I own one. And unless I hit the lottery have no intention of replacing it.
After fourteen years and many units I'm finally happy.

Thanks for the Blue Circle recommendation, forgotten about that one.

I too own the Cayin A88T and agree with Paul Burke on his assessment. A damn good amp for the price with musical sound,good bass, detailed and hamonically rich mids and sweet highs. Only, on certain (very few) recordings, the upper mids tend to be forward and bright sometimes. It may be due to the stock power tubes. The 6sn7s are RCAGTB.

The amp drives my Dyn 82s surprisingly well for just 22W. The sound does become congested with confused bass on bass heavy tracks such as Gladiator (this even in ultralinear mode). But this could be due to my power hungry speakers. I am sure this will not be an issue with more efficient speakers.

The only other issue on this amp is biasing. You have to open bias the amp from the inside. The process is easy but a bit risky. Internal biasing could be intimidating if you are new to tubes.

In terms of swapping tubes, it is cheap unless you go for very rare NOS tubes. A pair of current production KT88s could cost anywhere between $80-150 per quad. So this will not be a problem.