This may stretch your budget a bit, but I recommend that you consider a Lyngdorf 2170 integrated as your foundational piece. They will go for about $2500 used. The internal DAC is really good and the room perfect software really makes optimizing set up in a room easy. It will drive most speakers very nicely. The Lyngdorf, in my opinion, is head and shoulders above what I expect from Class D. It doesn't really sound like tube, nor does it sound like what I expect from SS. Somewhere in between perhaps. I have one in my second system in a room with problematic accoustics and it made a world of difference. You don't say what you intend to use as a source, but the high end input module gives you plenty of coax, optical, a USB, and even an internal MM phono inputs. the DAC is good enough that you can probably get by with a decent CD or DVD player using the Coax or USB input. This thing is good enough to warrant stretching the budget a bit. Used, these things are an insane value.
