Looking for Advice on Focal Speakers

One man's opinion and you can take it with a grain of salt.  If you mean you have a Halo power amp going through an AVR pre then I would look to upgrade to an integrated that does HT bypass and stick with Aria (i'm assuming some sort of budget).  If you mean you have the Halo integrated then I'd say you are good.  Interesting that you say Paradigm is bright considering that's what many say about Focal (not me, I love them).  I thought Aria was great value, didn't fall for Kanta nearly as much and Sopra made my heart skip a beat.  

@suboost I think what @mceljo and I are saying is you'd be better off with an upgrade of some other components with Aria vs. going Kanta and staying with what you have.  Looking at your room Kanta will be huge and stick out a bunch, definitely not WAF friendly if that's an issue.  

I think you answered my specific question but let me share where I was headed.  You have "everything into the Marantz" so I'm deducing that's an AVR and the Parasound is simply a power amp.  Ideally what @mceljo and are saying is dedicated integrated amp will have a much better preamp section (make your source material sound better).  And it's easlly assembled via the HT bypass function he referenced.  Again without knowing all other components my gut says Aria + some other tweaks are likely to yield a better overall result.  

@cd84 nailed it in the first response.  @suboost you can buy just a pre but what i've seen is for basically the same money you can acquire a high quality integrated instead.  Parasound, Anthem, NAD or even Marantz the possibilities are endless.  

If you are a car guy at all you know you can't just drop a giant turbo into a car without changing the fuel system, tune, exhaust etc.  What many of us are suggesting is the Kanta by itself would be the equivalent behavior.  Good luck, it's fun and you have me rethinking doing some listening sessions at my dealers in area this fall.  

@suboost happy to help.  If you click on my virtual system you'll see my setup....I went through the same path as we are recommending and have a very satisfying best of both worlds combo using HT bypass.  I personally. wouldn't use tubes in this system.  I don't want to burn time on tubes just to have my wife watching Frank N Gracie on Netflix while I'm out of town.  I have my second system for that, and you can see it in the virtual setups also.  

Here's a list of amps that support HT bypass.  Good luck and keep us posted.  

@suboost Per your last question, when you are not using bypass your integrated amps preamp section will be in use.  When you are using bypass, it is removed from the equation and the integrated just becomes a power amp slave for the HT receiver powering front L/R.  You never told us what you are doing for a streamer/source?  Just reading between the lines it sounds like you are just getting started in upping your game.  Get the Arias, get the integrated, and have a reasonable (BS node is fine) streamer directly into it.  Highly recommend Qobuz as the source.  Play with that for a while and then decide if you need tubes, external DAC, etc.  

As for how to view my (or anyones) system, click my name and then details and you'll see both laid out.  Keep us posted.