well ill tell you what i think, based on my dealings with my hifi over the past 18 month.
My first serious upgrade was to the newish Audiolab 8000s and the Audiolab 8000p, not the old ones, the new models 2009. I didnt like the aspect of the 8000s, and knew that i would change it one day as it didnt match my cd player i had at the time.
So my cd players i had were a Micromega stage 3,and what i still have my Audio analogue paganini. So i was never going to get "matching amps" easially anyway.
The 8000s was cracking amp tho, but the music was much more controlled when used alongside the 8000p (power amp). Anyway to cut a long story short, an Audio analogue puccini came up on E-bay,so i got it! (very very impressed with it).
Then a Audio analogue donnizetti came up,so got that. So again its much better using my two AA amps toegether than just using my puccini (which is an intergrated amp).
So my Audio analogue kit which is mid 90's,and my audiolab kit which is new, both sounded better with a two amp combo,rather that just the intergrated alone.
So thats that, but on another note,for a start i would reccommend the audiolab kit.
When i went to demo at first, forget model number but it was the latset models, i demoed Cyrus,Naim,Arcam and Audiolab. The conclusion was the two amp Audiolab kit. So like i say i would reccomend it. People seem too "fob" off audiolab for some reason,and i cant understand why....
It depends what you want to spend,but what i did was buy some new kit, then ended up selling to buy second hand kit,so its upto you. This all started with my Micromega stage 3 player, as it was a great cd player. i was taking it into local dealers and demoing it against current "high" end players and there wasnt much in it attal,not really blown away,so i knew there was some truth in class reviews of much older kit, which is another reason why i went for my Audio Analogue kit, that i have to this day...
So dont be scared of maybe buying some old kit off E-bay for a punt, what's the worst that can happen,you can always sell on....