I tend to agree with the notion that amps are not the best value when trying to improve your system. I do allot of project management with my work and we use the term "critical path." What is the most important task that needs to get done. That concept is the same when building a system. Personally, my critical path are things like speaker placement, room tweaking, power delivery, cabling, and shelving. I think alot of audiophiles think amps are the critical path when there are so many other cheaper and more effective "tasks" than buying an expensive amp.
One of the qualities of the LV, as with most effecicient speakers with benign loads, is the flexibility it gives you in the amp department. The Mahis are $1500 used and seem to be a good match. Would music on an $8,000 amp sound 4 times or even twice as good on the LVs... no, not in my opinion. I frankly think I would have to concentrate pretty hard to tell the difference.
I'm not trying to plug the Mahi's or LV but just making the point that I like to think of the speakers and amp almost as one component. For example, because of the qualities of Theil speakers being very revealing and requiring lots of power, I think you would need a pretty expensive amp to mate with them. So the "package" of amp and speaker would be relatively expensive.
BTW, Hatari what speakers do you have?
