go 7oaks (or somewhere that does 0% over 12 months type thing) and up your budget to a grand and get a Musical Fidelity A3.5...heh
once u hit that kind of quality and power, there is no going back....*grins*
will also mean you can upgrade to some pretty potent speakers in future.....(it can power quite demanding bookshelfs on its own, or biamped with another A3.5 could happily power floorstanders worth around £2,000.....but an A5 biamped would do that even better...heh)
however, for the price you mention in the thread, Arcam A80 isnt a bad buy, Primares £750 offering (forgot the model number atm sorry), Roksan Kandy.....all of these are ones i've heard and they all have something very good to give.......with the Kandy if you could do the interest free thing, for £1,000 you get both the Kandy amp and Kandy CD player in a box (usually £1,300 separately)....not a bad deal, very nice sounding, bags of power in the kandy too....can drive floorstanders easily.....
edit: btw, saw your mentioning about hearing what the artist recording it wanted to hear or something.....deffo save up for the MF A3.5 or A5...heh...no word of a lie, just glorious sound.......MF actually went as far as to have a Mozart Clarinet piece recorded for them and pressed on to a disc with their own label which they chuck in free with the A5 (dont think u get it in the A3.5 sadly, might do tho..).....thats how much they care about the sound....(the MF main guy is/was a clarinet player btw...heh)
however you would need to get a nice pair of speakers eventually to make the most of this amp....something along the lines of MA GS10's or upwards.....perhaps B&W 7xx series if you prefer B&W sound to MA.......or ProAc mebbe....etc....
edit edit: just to make you dribble, i'm doing a bit of late night listening here, MF A5 being fed by my 3910 (= to a £400 CD player approx) thru my GR10's.....its at a very low level, well below normal voice volume......and i can still hear most of what there is in the recording.....vocals, strings, drums, bass, piano.......most times at low volumes you'll lose some background vocal harmonies, also the bass guitar will tend to disappear...drums such as kickdrum can get very muted, the snap to midbass can become less noticeable as well....but nope, its more or less all present and correct.......thats what happens when you blow your budget and go to the real hifi level...heh....if you cant do it now, fair do's, but my advice would be to save up more money in that case, then get the super duper amp.....then mebbe in a year or so get the speakers.....patience is a virtue thats usually very well rewarded...heh.....
