Looking for speaker recommendations that I can purchase on Amazon.com

I'm out.  Glad you're happy with your amp and best of luck finding speakers that work for you.  Enjoy the music!

Food for thought here:

You said: " The Yamaha AS2000 costs 3 times as much. I’m not sure it would give me a 3x better experience. And with a 30 day return policy, it would be hard to give it a 100 hr break-in and stay within that return window."

Reply: You leave the component on all the time, turn the speakers off, raise the volume a little and you have your 100 hour break in period done in just over 4 days.


You said: " My most challenging music, classical Indian music (such as sitar with a "drone" accompaniment instrument called a tanpura) sounds enjoyable. (It’s not as good a a live concert, but I don’t think I’ll get close to "live" until I can purchase some really high end speakers, a new subwoofer and optimize my listening room. Switching amps right now is not going to get me to "like live music", as I am sure everyone here will agree.)"

Reply: I disagree with your last sentence but whether you switch amps or not, the main point is to be open to suggestions, open to different gear and listening experiences. Yes, your room will make the biggest impact on the gear that you have and most people pay little attention to their listening room so that is very important. But if you’ve never heard tube gear than your last statement about "never going to like live music" is one based on inexperience and close mindedness. I’m assuming the Yamaha at 26 lbs is some kind of digital class D amp, and yes, they all sound pretty good; however, I have found that most of the digital amps are extremely clean sounding but can sound dry, that is why they are best mated up with a tube preamp. They need the added sweetness of tubes.

For lots of us, this is a journey and the fun of it is trying out different gear and getting different flavors of how things sound. And in all my years of this journey (35+ years), overwhelmingly, I have found that when I have tube gear, all is right in the world and when I have solid state gear, I always find myself wanting tube gear again. There is something just very right, very pleasing to my ears, the even order distortion that nothing but tube gear has that makes it just so right sounding. So I’m saying is just check it out, you might be very amazed with how different the experience is and how you have a preference for it as many people do. And if you do happen to listen to some tube gear, know that there are many different variations of tube gear as well. Each tube has a different sound and whether it’s Push pull, single ended triode, single ended pentode, or OTL all have a much different flavor as well. So many nuances, so many options - yes, but that’s where a forum like this helps.   With tube gear, there is an emotional content to what you are hearing that I have rarely, if ever have achieved listening to SS gear and as a result,  the guys producing good SS gear always try to make their stuff sound like tubes.  



You said:  "I am coming to realize that the biggest deficiency in my system is probably the subwoofer, which is too boomy. "

Reply: I doubt it highly, might be improper set up or placement. A lot of people listen with a subwoofer way too loud or for video enhancement. When set up correctly, you should not be able to detect where a subwoofer is placed and it just fills in the bottom end seamlessly without drawing attention to itself.

Best of luck on your journey and enjoy the music!

Willemj, per your message:

" lou_setriodes,
You are I think too fast in your scepticism about that Yamaha amplifier. Did you actually read the review of the Yamaha P3500S that I linked to, and the very detailed measurements that the reviewer published? These days I at least rarely see such factual detail in a review. It is a first rate amplifier and fully up to high hifi standards. I therefore bought the smaller P2500S for my son, and I can only confirm that amplifier’s sonic qualities."

No, I have not read the review and I’m not a meaurements guy whatsoever. I’ve heard things that measure horribly that sound amazing and vice versa. I’ve heard classic tube gear that measures horribly but is so sweet and euphonic that it was some of the best sounding gear I ever heard. Cut off in the lows and highs but that midrange was to die for and just so musical.

So I much prefer musicality over measurements. I’ve heard single ended gear that measures poorly but when you hear it, it just sounds so right. I’ll take that anyday over measurements on paper. It certainly is a benchmark to be looked at initially, but I let my ears decide.  

This makes it perfectly clear: you want a euphonic system, including even order harmonic distortion. That is up to you. Conversely, I don’t want any distortion, just a straight wire with gain. I don’t want electronics to have a sound of their own. My idea of musicality is to leave the music as much as possible as it is. That is my very personal preference.
As for the Yamaha, it measures very well (just read the test), but it also sounds very clean and neutral. And it is not class D but A/B. My son’s P2500S and the tested P3500S have traditional power supplies, the bigger P5000S has a switched mode power supply.