An upgrade a long time overdue


I am thinking its time for some upgrades - like the whole system.  But its been so many years, and Boards like this have become so helpful and accessible, I am turning to the Pros as it were to seek some varied and hopefully passionate advice.  

Disclaimer - I tend to buy used as I have tastes that appreciate the A/B-class but have a D-class budget, so something that used to be $8,000 new that can be gotten for say $2200 now is right on the mark.  Of course it must still be relevant and likely remain so for the next couple of years.  But age doesnt matter otherwise....

I am currently running a bryston 2B (which itself was an upgrade from a Myryad T40), with a Cal Audio dac and dynaudio countour 1.8 floor-standing speakers.  this is the guts - i use a sony blue-ray player for the occasional movie, but mostly listening to music (which is all over the place, jazz, rock, opera, classical, etc, and more recently, the dreaded Pandora channeled through the phone and a input jack)

What research I have been able to do leads me to consider opening up the sound stage with something more mixed, like a conrad johnson pv14L as pre- and the ayre v5xe, and coming forward in the age of digital, considering something like the oppo 105 but i was also thinking the nad m50 / m52 combo instead of the oppo..........and lastly all this heard through (I'm thinking) vienna accoustics beethoven baby grands

so maybe the whole thing comes in at 8k - 10k?  can I achieve 80% - 90% of this for 5k? or less even?  Is my mixology fraught with disaster?  am I missing something obvious?  

i dont know what I dont know here so please weigh in 

thanks for your consideration and insights
jammer66
Bryston builds a fine amplifier, and always did. But newer is definitely better. You could do worse than visit the local Bryston dealer and listen to the speakers that he likes to pair with it. Doesn't mean you have to buy that exact system, but most companies retain a similar kind of sound. If you find something you like, you'll be miles ahead, because you can ask more detailed questions; and that reduces risk a lot.
Jammer, I own a Rega Apollo R and a McCormack-Just decent players that I can output to my Ayre Codex.
 To be honest, since I went to streaming, I haven't played a disc in 12 months. Though I probably get better sound from my discs, I can't find much fault with the streaming  services. It is so much nicer to choose from an almost infinite variety of music all at the touch of my keyboard.
Bob
Take a moment to read about the Bluesound Vault 2.  It could be a very powerful upgrade to your system.  The Oppo 105 is a great piece but Oppo is going to start shipping the 205 soon. It's basically a 4k 105.  If you have space for a sub-woofer, look for one with a remote.  Try the sub before you swap out your speakers.  You may be happy with what you have (save a few bucks for a good single malt!).
uncoupling the notion of having a player as part of the system altogether is something of a radical idea for me ..... but it appears the DAC technology (whether Ayre or anyone else) is optimized by ripping a cd to storage ....and to that end I can see why people opt to use their computer, or an external data storage setup.  External drives with 1T or 2T are cheap, most everyone already has some sort of computer with disk reader, and the external drives can be backed up in case of failure very easily.  As long as the file type is FLAC, it appears.  

Setups like the NAD or Bluesound ones appear to offer the advantage of being able to play (or rip) cds (so new content is easily added to storage) but with the drawback of embedded harddrive storage disks (and resident failure/maintenance issues)

an interesting turn of events and thoughts......