Help me find my ideal Stereo Integrated Amp

@livinon2wheels If you know where you want to be and you invest the time, you will get there.

It sounds like you know what you are doing - I don’t, I keep changing my system, I keep shrinking my budget by buying high and selling low and the sound is getting worse. But hopefully I learn something and it will get better

Most of the forum is comprised of very well heeled buyers that punch way above my weight in purchasing power.

I think a lot of people here have been very successful and are retired and have a lot of time and money to spend and are one or two zeros ahead of me. But it's not a competition, it's just as easy to make improvements to my simple system from 2 zeros less as it is for very high end systems.

I'm not "well heeled" but I like to spend money on tangible things that give me years, sometimes decades of enjoyment.  I'm not one to hop on a plane and go somewhere , I would rather have something lasting.   Can't think of anything better than something like a MA9000 or 12000.  Those are great amps.   A little beyond my means but worth it if you can afford it. 

I buy used and new if I can and will almost always be selling what's displaced.   I'd rather save for a year or two than compromise.   I will usually stretch my budget to avoid buyer's remorse .  Buyer's remorse is almost always due to lateral moves.   If you avoid those you save in the end from not constantly rotating gear.   

I had a Gryphon DIablo 300 that sounded amazing. You can find them occasionally here with the phono-stage module in your price range used. I did upgrade from there and sold mine for about $9500. I did compare it to a lot of other integrated amps - McIntosh - Hagel - Acuphase - Luxman - Moon. The only amp that sounded better to me was an Audio Research amp that I bought in the end. The Gryphon was tight - iron gripped - nuanced with a LOT of power..... I was driving a pair of Sonus Faber Serafino's at the time.

Good Luck...!

@oddiofyl I appreciate that way of thinking too, and try not to buy 'cheap.' Not that spending a lot of money results in tangible improvements necessarily, but by choosing something that has comparable specs to more expensive equipment but perhaps gives up some feature that I probably wouldnt use anyway because of the way I listen. And while I know this may open up a bag of worms with some who might read this, all of my old equipment had bass and treble controls that could be invoked with any source connected to the system and I appreciate the subtle effect that can have. All of the new receivers or pre/processors I have seen have no tone control other than some kind of built-in room correction. Lets be clear, I am talking about a 5.2 surround system. I wont be doing ceiling speakers for atmos. No one seems to offer this most basic form of tone shaping for ANY surround sound system. Using room correction software is inconvenient because, as far as I know, none of those response shaping tools can be invoked on the fly while listening, unlike a bass and treble control. I purchased an Emotiva MR-1L receiver to test out the concept of using room correction software and see first hand how well or poorly it worked. Lets just say I am NOT a fan. Too time consuming, less than wonderful results, channel balance is awful, I can do better by ear but it takes a LOT of tweaking to get to a place where the response corrections fit a curve that sounds good, Overall its a great receiver with a few quirks that irk me, I will have to spend clearly more, a lot more, to get functionality that doesn't irk me. Due to the generally poor amplifiers in most receivers offered today, particularly at MR-1L's price point, its clear I am going to have to go upscale quite a bit...The only one that appears to tick all the boxes is the Marantz AV-10. And then add amplifiers to suit. By the time I have done that, I have close to 10K in just a processor and amplification.....Or go completely in the other direction and by the Schiit 5.1 channel processor for $400 that does everything in analog and follows NONE of the modern formats. It converts any 2 channel source into 5.1 in the analog domain and provides a satisfactory listening experience for movies (if you believe the reviews) and music as well. Not sure how much Schiit I would be buying if I went that route, but the idea of not having to keep up with the ever more complicated Dolby standards and yet have a pleasant and rewarding movie experience anyway is more than a little appealing. Certainly financially and possibly sonically. So its a quandary...with either choice external amps are required. I could be all in on the amplifiers via Emotiva for about $2000 if I was willing to settle for 200 wpc, and nearly $4000 to double that and have the Schitt processors for 400 and be all in for something over half the price of the $7000 Marantz. Or marry digital and analog together by buying an Emotiva TA1...to use as a DAC - It gives me FM radio, A phono input, an optical input, real tone controls, preamp ouputs to send to the Schitt processor and then to the amps and I am in for most of the electronics I need for under $3000 or $5000 with high power amps. So I could have FM, TV, and another source (streaming or CD) plus Phono and be a modern 'old school' mostly analog and never have to concern myself with whatever the latest video codec is and whether I can decode it. The speakers in this system are yet to be decided and should be the topic of yet another post...so what would you guys do and why? Would you buy up to the AV-10 or buy some Schitt? Or go the Emotiva DAC route?