I ran a set of 20 V3's with a Mark Levinson 23.5/Modwright SWL 9.0 and was quite pleased. I later upgraded to the Signature S2 v1's and was even more impressed. I had many, many positive comments when demoing this setup and selling the S2's generated a fair amount of regret. I thought it reproduced the female voice very well and was a real solid performer at that price point. I have a tendency to mix in a fair amount of rock music so I ended up upgrading to the S4s. I was just listening to the Studio 20 V5's last weekend and was very impressed ... I think Paradigm has made a quantum leap in the Studio series; the fit and finish rival that of the Signature line. I got that same "warm and fuzzy" I got with the S2's and heard a lot of similarities in the sound. I was ready to purchase a new set of Studio 40s when the salesman informed me they are no longer made bummer. To answer your question I believe a Levinson 27.5 would be an excellent fit and I also had great luck with a little Audio Research VT-60. I felt the S2 was not a particularly picky speaker when it came to amplification; it did well with a number of amplifiers I tried. The VT-60 was just a tiny bit under powered I thought but an ARC VT-100 might fit your needs and fall within your price range.
For the record I am currently running the same amp/linestage setup with a set of Proac D2's and had a set of Dynaudio 1.3's before that. I am a real big Paradigm fan at heart and can see me going back to the S4's (Birdseye) at some point in the future.
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