Power Amp for newbie

Nothing wrong with Acurus for the price. There is a Creek A52SE amp for sale from a dealer on this site for $650. List is over $1K. It got great reviews in HiFi Choice Magazine. Creek is classic "British" sound. Mike Creek designed the wonder Cambridge Audio A3i amp and decent T500 Tuner.

The Rogue 88 is a great piece of gear for the money.800/1000 used gets you one.You can do better but more lickly to do worse in that price range.

A McCormack DNA .5 can be had for that price and would be an excellent choice.

Thump, I've owned the Acurus RL-11 and I presently own the ACD-11 CD player that is used as a transport presently. It's nice to assume that if you purchase all of the same brand that you should have some magical synergy but in my experience that is not the case most of the time. Anyway, based on the rest of your equipment I would recommend the B&K EX4420 power amp. It has a very dark tonal quality about itself and would help to offset the high tonal quality that the Acurus line of products tend to have. What cables are you using by the way?

A Classe CA100 would work well and often available for $650 -$800 used .