The right amp for my system

What is your source? I was in about the same boat as you describe. I had Marantz 125wpc receiver driving Focal 918s with an old Pioneer multidisc changer.
This year I bought a rebuilt older H/K Citation 16a that is rated 150wpc. The amp made quite a difference in overall sound for the $ spent.
I recently bought a Sony 5400 cd player and it made a huge difference. My system was very tiring to listen to with the Marantz because I would have to turn it up so loud to get certain sounds and then as different aspects of the song would kick in it would be complete overkill...just loud! The Sony seemed to level things out and decrease my desire to always turn it up.

With that being said I would shop around and buy an amp you can afford...then go from there. I am looking at preamps now for 2 channel setup. I have stopped using my center channel speaker since I got the Sony. It sounds best in the pure direct mode.

Thanks for the imput. Advice is well taken. I think the speakers are good ones but there is no lustre in them. Still looking for advice. I'm a newbie in this but love good sound. After what you've said i've done some research and am now leaning toward the Emotiva xpa-2 to power my mains. The write ups seem to be good as to sound replication. It is a little stretch for my budget now but will be a good tartet to shoot for. What do you think?

To get clarity you have to add acoustical room treatments to tame the early reflections.

What are you looking for in sound? What type of music do you listen to? Seems that the Clarity strengths are everywhere except in the low end range. My Focal are a bit on the lean side and I found that a sub using high level input from amp sounds good. Just enough gain to hear.
Again, the source has a lot to do with the result. I am assuming you are using cd or combo player?

On the clarity Bigby is right. Poor acoustics will cause the clarity problems as well as many others. Stats like yours won't have the same punch as cones in the same price class. I'm not sure what you listen to or what volumes so I'm guessing. A good subwoofer may help also. A sub is not a good place to cheap out either. If you have woodworking skills designing and building your own will save a lot of money.

Room treatments are super important and will have more affect on the sound than anything else maybe even speakers. If you look at the frequency response of a room not treated it will have peaks and dips as much as 20db. That's a lot and enough to mess up the sound.