I missed the speaker brand (would like to know) but likely still going to answer Luxman, Pass, Gryphon or Hegel. Mac 5300 isn't in same range as much of what we are describing here. As someone else said move up the line 1-2 notches if you can.
I use Luxman 509x and this review really spoke to me.,,,would be curious where you OP or others come out on this continuum:
For argument and sake of reference point, if you were to put Boulder amplifiers (and we still had the 1100 series here for comparison) as straight-up natural at 12 o’clock – adding nor subtracting nothing, with no sense of added tonal saturation, our reference Pass XS Pre/XA 200.8 is probably at about 10:30. With going to the left a bit on the warm/saturated side. The Luxman 900 series was about 11:30, with our tube references the PrimaLuna EVO 400 and VAC i170 coming in at about 9:00 and 9:30. I’d put the recent Esoteric integrated about 12:30 – slightly to the cold side, and the last few Simaudio amplifiers we’ve reviewed about 1:00 – even more clinical. The L-509x, like it’s larger separates has that same touch of warmth/saturation, without being slow or non-resolving. I wish I would have had the ability to listen to them both side-by-side and suspect that the L-509x comes very, very close to the 900 series in terms of sonic performance.