Why the need for the 3.6? Why not consider the Maggie 3.3 or 3.5? For just a couple hundred $$ more than the 1.6 on the used market, these are magnitudes beyond the 1.6 in the context of frequency extreme extension, 3-dimensionality and midrange texture. There is a pair of 3.3's here for $1250 and this is a killer value. Your room is a great size for the larger Maggies.
For an amp, you might consider another DNA1 for $1k or so and now you have a pair of these driving the 3.3s. Or consider one of the bigger Counterpoint 20/220 amps. I ran my 3.3 and 3.5 Maggies with the Counterpoint which was a huge step up from ARC tube amps to control this speaker. And this combination had a wonderful tonal coherency and natural musicality. I later went with Wolcotts which brought back some of the 3-dimensionality and bloom and had great driveability of these speakers. But your front end needs a lot of attention before I could ever suggest pouring out $4-5k for the Wolcotts.
The above suggestions would cost you about $1000-1500 from what you have and alone would knock your socks off. This leaves you a lot left to focus on preamp and sources. A tube preamp really is a must with these speakers. An ARC SP-8 would be awesome here in the $800-1000 range. And this still leaves plenty to keep your Sony as a transport and pair it with a nice DAC; the Electrocompaniet ECD1 in the $1200 range comes to mind. And still you have much $$ left to address a cartridge update as well.
A lot can be done with $5000 without the need to put it all in one place. In any case, pitch the Maggie Series 1.x idea; when you hear the Series 3.x, the 1.x is tough to go back to.
John
