I’ve been where you are. I had a denon 60WPC old 5.1 receiver. One day I splurged $900 on an open box dynaudio center channel and pair of dynaudio audience 50 bookshelfs. I was smitten--THIS is amazing sound, cannot get any better. My all-in stereo was about $1100 and I couldn’t be happier. I’m on a budget, the halo is a dream amp for me I’ve always meddled in mid-high end... now I have a parasound 2125 amp, hareth p3esr speakers, a technics turntable with Pickering cartridge, NAD CD player..the hobby bites you quick. However, my entire setup is only about $5,000 used prices (I only buy used). This setup sounds better than that first one. A dedicated 2 ch amp kills a 60WPC home theater reciever. But I don’t believe I’ve ever experienced as much awe from a single upgrade as those dynaudio speakers on the underpowered HT reciever.
I got more satisfaction experimenting with multiple components in my budget than from spending it all on one piece.
Especially an amp. Amps DO color the sound slightly, but the differences after $400 are slight, from my small A/B tests (paramount, rotel, adcom, NAD). I’m not counting recievers, they color the sound a ton, but a good 2 channel amp will be a great upgrade and doesn’t have to cost as much as a halo.
As others said, speakers are where it counts... playing with different speakers, Maybe subs, Maybe a room mode PEQ like the miniDSP will have more noticible effects.
In my opinion your not stair stepping going from the Yamaha to a halo, your climbing a second story balcony to break in. I’d stick to stair stepping if it were me.
By the way, I had a Yamaha avantage reciever and thought it was bright/harsh. Not a good match with dynaudio. If it were me I would keep the Yamaha for movies and use a passive switch like the schiit sys to bypass the Yamaha (or build a dedicated 2 ch system) when listening to music. For HT you want boom and dsp, for music I only want CD, amp, and speakers. A passive preamp keeps the ’coloring’ of a reciever out and a good used $400-600 amp is plenty. Im a huge fan of using passive preamps, input selectors, and even speaker selectors to have physical control over what a reciever tries to do in DSP.
My point is, having been where you are i wouldn’t jump to a halo yet. But I would find a good, not too old brand name amp for $400-$600 (parasound, emotiva, rotel, NAD)... even more important is to pick speakers first.. some amps mate well with some speakers and horrible with others.
I got more satisfaction experimenting with multiple components in my budget than from spending it all on one piece.
Especially an amp. Amps DO color the sound slightly, but the differences after $400 are slight, from my small A/B tests (paramount, rotel, adcom, NAD). I’m not counting recievers, they color the sound a ton, but a good 2 channel amp will be a great upgrade and doesn’t have to cost as much as a halo.
As others said, speakers are where it counts... playing with different speakers, Maybe subs, Maybe a room mode PEQ like the miniDSP will have more noticible effects.
In my opinion your not stair stepping going from the Yamaha to a halo, your climbing a second story balcony to break in. I’d stick to stair stepping if it were me.
By the way, I had a Yamaha avantage reciever and thought it was bright/harsh. Not a good match with dynaudio. If it were me I would keep the Yamaha for movies and use a passive switch like the schiit sys to bypass the Yamaha (or build a dedicated 2 ch system) when listening to music. For HT you want boom and dsp, for music I only want CD, amp, and speakers. A passive preamp keeps the ’coloring’ of a reciever out and a good used $400-600 amp is plenty. Im a huge fan of using passive preamps, input selectors, and even speaker selectors to have physical control over what a reciever tries to do in DSP.
My point is, having been where you are i wouldn’t jump to a halo yet. But I would find a good, not too old brand name amp for $400-$600 (parasound, emotiva, rotel, NAD)... even more important is to pick speakers first.. some amps mate well with some speakers and horrible with others.