Thank you all for the great responses/recommendations.
1. I do have 5k going nuclear in my pocket. It's money that I've saved on the side specifically for this hobby.
2. High ceilings...definitely. Speakers are in a space that has a loft, but the speakers are in an area where there are 2 stories up before any ceiling space is hit. One side wall is 4 feet away, the other about 15. It's an odd space but it's home.
3. Listing to jazz, electronic, and rock primarily. 320kbs MP3 through Spotify from the MacBook Pro. Planning to add a turntable soon.
4. What I do not like about the current system:
A. High amont of distortion from the tube pre's, even after swapping the tubes (pretty good ones at that). Both may be defective, which annoys me considering both are less then a year old. Different distortion for each one, so it's definitely the amps. The Emo is dead quiet by itself, and I ran the pre out from the Peachtree through it with the same results.
B. I've heard some very nice sounding towers and it seems to have me longing for a speaker that has a fuller bottom end. I like the idea of going 2.0 as this is primarily a music system. The Focals drop out at 50hz and the Totems at 42hz, but that's at the expense of too much midrange in my opinion.
C. A twice repaired and still defective Decco65. 2 times the USB implementation has been repaired. It's been fine since the second repair about 6 months ago, but it's only got about 15 hours on that particular input because I no longer trust it, leaving DAC duty to the DacMagic. Additionaly, when at low volumes, the Peachtree clips out signal to the left speaker. The volume must be raised higher on the Peachtree's dial (then lowered on the computer) to get signal to both L and R. Though I do not think its a bad sounding amp, it does strike me as a bit on the warm side. I ran it into the tweets of the Totems (with the Emo's on the bottom) and the sound seemed very congested compared to the Emo being on the tweets. The bass was also flabbier with the Peachtree on the bottom. They may just not be a good match I suppose.
D. While the Dacmagic has been rock solid and reliable, I sometimes feel like the sound is a bit sterile. Too clean, I suppose, and almost a tough listen without tubes between it and the amp. I chalk it up mostly to the content it's being fed, so I suppose I am looking for a DAC/Amp combo that will be a little more forgiving of the less then stellar recording practices used by some of the musicians that I listen too.
I feel like a high quality tube pre or integrated could go a long way for the Focals, but I'm not sure I want to pick out an amp that will complement them should I decide to go for towers I the end.
Hopefully that sheds a bit more light. I apologize for being so vague in the original post.
