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.