Recommendations for Amp/speaker combo for $10,000

"After all, *everyone* here knows that the room/speaker interface is, BY FAR, the most critical metric used to obtain the best sound quality from any sound system. This is closely followed by using the very best source material available for the music I like to listen to."

No offense at all to RW, but I don't fall into the *everyone* catagory. His recommendations are valid and important things to consider, but there's just more too it than that. Even if you get everything he mentions right (and you need to), there's plenty more ways to mess up a system.

You would do us (and yourself) a huge favor if you indicated what aspects of sound reproduction are most important to you along with what specifically you are looking to improve upon. It would also help to know what equipment you're currently using so we know what your sonic benchmark is. Without this information we are all just shooting in the dark.

Are you considering anything specific yet? In amps, pre amps, or speakers? Your question is so vague (altho it's good that you listed your Room size & music preference), you could get dozens of answers, many of which could be good.

I'd focus on speakers first probably--unless you're totally decided on a tube amp--then you could pick the amp & get tube friendly speakers.....

Not knowing much about your room or tastes, if I were about to spend 10k it would be something like,

Ayre integrated with aerial 7t's
Or, Ayre separates with Nola contenders, vandy's, possibly aerial 7b (I love mine but given how long they've been around you may not be comfortable with the likely age of the speakers you'd be buying).

If I could stretch a bit I'd do 7t or 9's with Ayre separates.

Try the Bob Carver Cherry 180 (200 watt) tube mono blocks with built in volume control and Magnaplanar 1.7 or Reference 3A MM DeCapo. Transparency, truth of timbre, incredible soundstage/imaging, dynamics, life-like sound. You won't get ultimate bass extension with these speakers though. You'll need subwoofer for that.