I am about to start a similar journey to the OP; replacing my 22yr old marantz pm34 and tannoy603 with something new and exciting for my impending big birthday next year.*wacko*
My room size is 4mx5m or 4mx6m depending on whether the boss allows me into the lounge or dining room! My music selection is quite varied Elvis Costello, Fratellis, Housemartins, Martin Stephenson and under duress Duran*dash1* Duran. 99% of listening is through sonos connect, and all files are lossless.
My budget is not fixed but would consider £2k to £3.5k in total. I am happy to buy exdemo items if that brings the right things together at the right price.
Before starting auditions, i wanted to 'create a starting point' from which i could then amend as the journey of auditions progressed.
I intended to start with an amp with a built in dac ( cyrus 8dac or nad c390dd) assuming that the dacs in these amps would be an improvement on the sonos inbuilt dac. I do not want a seperate dac.
My next idea was a standmount such as ls50, scm11 or pmc21/22.
I notice that the general advice is that the smc11 require 'decent' amplification, and i think 100w was mentioned in the thread. Would that rule out the Cyrus 8dac?, or is the 'lean' nature of cyrus a poor match anyway? I also note that several people have recommended Caspian amp as a good match; but that would mean using the inbuilt sonos dac (maybe theLHC might have a view on it's suitability?)
I enjoyed reading Pedro's journey, and am hoping to get the same positive result over the next few months*yahoo*