Retirement integrated amp for a “fiscal conservative”…..Part 1: I have a plan

@ezsteams

Have you contacted Ellington HiFi (Tony) in Fairhope, Alabama. He has some great lines. I've talked to him numerous times regarding different amps and streamers.

Good plan, never visited an audio show, but an excellent idea.  You can put together a very nice system for $8k.  I’ve built 6 systems for 6 different rooms in two homes over the last four years ranging from $1k to $15k. Some new gear, some used stuff. They all sound “good”. In each room for their intended purposes, e,g., main room, bedroom, office, home gym, etc. #1 rig @$15k actually sounds pretty amazing.  You’re in a good spot, enjoy the journey. 

Go to many audio shows that you can. Tampa has 1 in a couple of weeks. I used to go to CES/the show/rmaf and others every year and now just the Tampa show.

Most equipment you will be seeing will be way over your $8000 budget. Your goal is to see if you can hear a difference in setups, doesn’t matter if they are $10k systems or $200k systems. If you can’t hear any difference then I would spend a dime on an integrated and I would look at the Kef LS60 or Kef LS50 wireless 2 setups. These are active systems where all you need is an Ethernet cable and power. You just need a streaming service or Roon and you are done. 
 

If you can’t hear any hear a difference, then I’d still look at the Kef speakers above but I’d also start evaluating as any integrated amps you can. When you go to an audio show and you find something you like, ask for a personal audition which they will give you after the show closes for the day or before it opens the next day. If done that many times and it’s only you in the room. Go to Atlanta and check out a few audio places there. 
Besides the sound of an integrated, you need to figure out what features you are looking for in an integrated: dac/phono preamp/streaming capabilities, etc. Not all integrated amps provide these functions and most that do are compromised at best, but maybe they will be good enough for you. How many inputs do you need, balanced inputs, sub outputs, equalizer, dsp, the list goes on. 
Unless you have high sensitive speakers, I would look to get as powerful amp as possible within your budget. I had to sell my H360 Hegel because it wasn’t powerful enough for some new speakers, but I got a250 watt separate amp and it had plenty of power for the speakers, same power but the separate amp is 3x the size of the Hegel 

Do you still have Joseph Audio Perspective speakers? Read the stereophile review where the reviewer makes a few comments that can help you as a general direction for selecting the new integrated.

To him the speakers worked best with Pass XA60.5 amps and were unforgiving when it came to less than perfect recordings.
The Pass Labs XA60.5 are warm sounding Class A amps. I’ve owned Pass electronics and the house sound is warm and luscious even with their Class A/B amps. One of the advantages of Pass amps is they make less than perfect recordings sound very tolerable.
So I would probably focus on rooms at shows that feature Joseph Audio speakers as well as rooms featuring Pass Labs electronics. See if you can find anyone running a Boulder 866 integrated as well. I find the 866 very similar in sound to Pass so with those speakers looking for integrated I would focus on Pass Int250 and Boulder 866.

@lalitk ​​​​@singere thank you for the hifi shop recommendations. Looking at the Product lines listed on their websites, it appears they carry extremely high end $$$$ manufacturers.

@roadcykler you may well be right; I’m praying you’re not (my wife is probably praying you are). Either way I win as going to a high end audio show is on my life bucket list (I suspect the Agon community can appreciate that). 

@audphile1 , yes, I still have the original Perspectives (non-graphene) and I believe I’m not getting the most out of them. Pass Labs is definitely on my amplification short list. There was a used Pass Labs INT-250 for sale last month for just under $7,600 that I would likely have bought if I knew my ears are capable of hearing the sonic qualities I’m looking for. I’m ready to place that bet yet.