What tier do you consider Anthem integrated?

@labguy 

Yeah, my speakers are pretty laid back yet with the ribbon tweeter that keeps the detail. Sadly, Aurum Cantus speakers aren't well known but I can say with certainty that they hit way above their price range. The STR Integrated is loaded up but I can say that shouldn't deter you from buying it. Look at it this way, having the connectivity the STR has you can plug anything you want into it now and in the future. 

My advice would be to focus on choosing speakers first, and once you’ve done that you can effectively reduce your search/options for amplifiers to those that can drive them properly and synergize sonically. Trying to do both at the same time can be more confusing and even counterproductive. And whatever you’re looking for, always include in your posts here as much as you can about your sound preferences, budget, and room as that’ll help you get much better and more targeted recommendations for your specific tastes and needs. Just my $0.02 FWIW, and best of luck.

So to answer your question and no going off into the weeds about speakers and other components. Anthem is very good equipment and the key would really be do you like the Anthem sound? Have you auditioned either the Anthem or the Pass on your speakers. 

You are going to get a lot of opinions and conjecture here. The only opinion that matters is yours as you will have to live with your gear choices. 

@mesch, thanks. All that is correct except I may prefer a tower that wouldn't overpower the room *too much (ha ha) (instead of bookshelf. monitors). My thought Is that being in an apartment a subwoofrr to augment  bookshelves may irritate the neighbors. I'd rather have a quality tower and sacrifice some extreme low end, but also, some monitors might suprise me even without a sub. I currently have an external old Parasound zdac, but it's not much better than the one in the node 2i.

@Kota1 suggested getting room correction via the martin logan unison streamer. I could sell my Node and get the other streamer that includes ARC. Previous speakers were revel f208 and salk songtower. Revel overpowered the room wit 2 8" woofers per side, and songtower had great clarity and low end extension but sounded to bright and forward on certain songs, but mostly, those drivers were too small for punchy midbass on rock and stuff like Jack white, NIN, etc.

The current system is "great for the price" and I believe I'll have to spend a lot more than i paid to noticeably exceed how it works in my room. It's cheap but it works. Yamaha A-S500 integrated with node 2i. Parasound zdac. Cheap Bluejean and wire world cables with Acoustic Energy Aegis 3 speakers is what I currently have.

I had Robert Hartley's book. Loaned it to a buddy of mine and never got it back in spite of repeatedly asking for it. (I hate loaning stuff. I gotta stop that).

Also, I'm not attached to any of the pieces. I'll sell it all off or just replace it..