In need of some Amplifier advice. Is therereally any point in it with my current setup?

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 think you should stick with the Yamaha for now and for quite a while. Amplifiers should not make much of a sonic difference, and by and large they don't. AV receivers are not ideal, but a recent one from a decent brand like Yamaha should not be a serious issue, and the power output should be enough.
The speakers and their interaction with the room are what really makes the sound of a system, and good speakers are expensive. I am not sure what your budget is, but you may have to spend more than you thought you needed. In a room like yours, how about the Harbeth SHL5+ on their own or their M30.1 augmented with a pair of small subwoofers? Both options are expensive but worth every penny. They are also an easy load, so your Yamaha should be fine with them. As an AV receiver the Yamaha will also have the advantage of room eq of one kind or another so you will not need to spend money on that. If good speakers are beyond your current budget, just wait and save. You don't have a bad system right now.

moskaudio,

I’m not sure if you are aware, but there is a great dealer right there in Moore, OK where you can listen to some speakers. Great guy to work with. I’m sending you a private message. I agree with others here that, as an actual transducer, different speakers will make the biggest difference in the overall sound that you will hear.

I, like you, always wondered if I could improve the two channel sound quality of my receiver by adding a separate amp. I have paired separate amps with several receivers, including a Yamaha RX-V1800, Onkyo TX-NR 809, and Denon AVR-X5200. I always like to get receivers that are in the upper middle of the manufacturer’s range, as I do believe they use a bit better components than their "el cheapo" models, but more importantly, because they offer pre-outs. The amps I have used in conjunction with my receivers include a McCormack DNA-1 Deluxe rev. A, Sherbourn 5/1500a, and Krell FPB 400cx.

Now, my family room system is where I have the newest AVR, which is the Denon. The amp I currently have paired with the Denon is a Krell FPB 400cx, which is a class A power amp. I must say, there is something nice about the sound I am now getting with the addition of the Krell. But it is expensive and runs hot as Hades.

If you do decide to add a separate amp, you will need a set of interconnects and I recommend a quality set.

If it were me, what would I do? Decide what I want....and get just that. If you think you might like the EMT speaker, have a listen to see if you do. But fair warning, those are good speakers not home theater speakers. You may not like the sound from them until you hear them AND you may not like the sound from them if you don’t match them with good hi-fi equipment. They probably need lots of current and clean power and signal to sound their best. Hear them with well matched power amp and source. If you use a HT preamp and amp with speakers like these, you may only enjoy 1/2 of what they could sound like. By mixing, selling, trying again audio equipment many audio nuts end up wasting money, having fun too, but still wasting money.
BTW I had wasted about $6-10k on audio equipment before I knew what I was doing and what I wanted. Big mistake because I don’t make Wall Street kind of money!

Driving a good pair of speakers with any part of an AVR if you care about 2-channel is just silly.  SILLY.  And, as you'll see below, completely unnecessary.  It's like buying a Ferrari and putting Sears Roadhandlers on it.  Sure, you can do it and you still might get some enjoyment from it, but most of the performance you paid a lot for will go unrealized.  You can patch in a good amp through your AVR preouts and that'd be like replacing the rear tires.  Yup, you get to enjoy more of the performance, but you're still leaving a crapload of enjoyment on the table.  Not until you replace the entire AVR in the 2-channel chain with a good stereo amp and pre (and assuming you have a decent source of course) will you get full enjoyment out of good speakers.  And you CAN replace both while leaving the AVR in for TV/video purposes.  Here's how...

Since you have preouts on your AVR, you simply take the front L/R preouts and route them to an unused input -- let's call it "video" -- on the dedicated stereo pre (or its HT bypass if it has one) and connect the stereo pre to the stereo amp as usual, which is then obviously connected to the speakers.  (Same can be done -- even easier and likely more cost effectively -- with an integrated stereo amp). Your high quality 2-channel source goes directly into another input on the stereo preamp or integrated -- let's call that input "CD" -- and you're basically done, and now the AVR is completely removed from the system for more serious 2-channel listening.  When you want to listen to good stereo you choose the "CD" input on the stereo pre, and when you want to watch TV/video you choose the "video" input and that's it.  The only thing is that if the stereo preamp doesn't have a HT bypass input you need to set a reference volume level on the stereo pre that is balanced correctly with the AVR.  I used to just use the 12:00 position on the pre as it's easy to set quickly and fairly accurately. 

Lots of us have done this here with great success, and trust me it's much easier in practice than it looks here in writing.  You'll now have a pure, high quality 2-channel system seamlessly embedded within your video system.  Best of both worlds!  And you can do it in stages as funds allow and fully appreciate the significant upgrade each stage brings.  Of course then you'll want to upgrade your speakers again and on it goes...