[Nailbunny7]

Lee,
What are you running for a DAC now?

Also, Bottlehead has improved their Stereomour 2A3 amp and if you don't like building, they can provide or guide you to that service.  The Stereomour has a stellar reputation.  If you had it built it would be right around $2000 CAD.

I can agree with this. Bottlehead's circuits are pretty great and a very good price. And the 2A3 would provide you with enough power for most needs, unless you maybe listen at rock concert levels.

[Lee_in_Canada]

Hi all thanks for the continued input.  It is a wonderful hobby and community.

Great to hear from you Rob and thanks for all the great service & advice. I hope your surviving the heat this summer. My current dac is a "Marantz dac1" chosen for functionality, a tendency towards warm drive and rhythm and I like the looks. 

Dave those Arte Forma 805 monoblocks are very interesing thanks for the input.  I'll be reading about them some more.  A new brand I wasn't aware of.

Thanks Nailbunny the stereo armour bump - I missed a bid on one about 2 months ago.  It was too bad as that probably would've kept me happy for a long time and saved everyone this post.

Fullrangeman I really like my preamp and the decware brand.  I think you guys are right either the mini tori or se34se would probably be my preferred decware amp.

I posted this thread because what I have learnt on my audio journey is "the obvious" a system at this level is the sum of it's parts.  Source, cables, amp and speakers each flavour in a significant way.  We each have to identify what excites us and proceed accordingly.  After quite a bit of trial and error I think I like a pretty warm and euphonic sound.  Truth be dammed I'm fine with the right colourations to my sound.

My system looks like this.

Source Marantz dac1 (warm for solid state)
Rega p2 with ortfon red (average sound compared to digital)
Preamp Decware CP2+ (clean fleshed out sound with Amperex 6922,)
Amp Crown xls1500 (clean solid state power, great dynamics,lacking warmth for me)
6L6 Tube Vuum (warm tube sound - less detail and dynamics)
Speaker cables audioquest.(? huge improvement over the lamp cord I was using)
Alnico 6 I feel the omegas are detailed, dimensional and amazing.  I don't think I will ever outgrow them as they faithfully reproduce everything up the chain. 

At the moment the amp is the weakest link and the place to introduce warmth unless I find a warmer source and go back to the crown.  Thanks again for sharing.  It is through reading posts and sharing we all gain from our collective knowledge.  Hopefully this thread will be useful to others as well.

[DaveC113]

Oh yeah, Lampizator has a couple of big SET amps too, the GM70 and 211... they are probably around $5k ish so maybe a bit over your budget but I really like the way their driver sections are done with white followers, my preamp uses the same output configuration and it works exceptionally well.

[FullRangeMan]

The GM70 no more $5K now its 6900 Euros. Gulp!
In the 2-3K usd there is two models from MingDa.
211(16W) and 805(38W) SE already with the new
black aluminum chassis.

They are basic amps, you have to add softstart and
two power on switches.

[ozoid]

Steve just delivered a Zen amp to me that's waiting for a pair of Alnico monitors that Louis should be shipping any day now, so perhaps my mouth should stay where my money is, but I'll second Dave's suggestion to at least consider the fi 2A3 amp, although I've only heard the stereo version, and not the monoblocs.

Decware's Mini-Torii was mentioned but I'm not sure if the Torii has. Now it has.

Lots of terrific choices at your price point. Let us know what you decide!

[Ultralight]

I do wonder how the Line Magnetic mini 218 3 watt SET compares to the 2 watt Decware.

LM are very welt built and I'm told even their lowest end model are point to point wiring etc. 

UL