Help me find a smooth solid-state amp?

Of the brands you mentioned, I would be interested in the McCormack. In my audition experience Classe and Bryston have bright sound. Aragon 8008BB is a good amp, but also slightly bright in the upper midrange. The McCormack DNA 1 or .5 were slightly warm. If you are willing to spend a little more, I would suggest a Pass Aleph 2 (monoblock) or Aleph 4. These are 100 watts of single ended Class A power and best any of the other brands mentioned by a wide margin, IMHO. They are a little laid back in the upper mids, smooth, but very extended at both frequency extremes. There aren't many better solid state amps than this. Read the reviews of the Aleph 4 and Aleph 2 at Audioreview.com. Used prices should be in the low $3000's and their are always plenty for sale (particularly Aleph 2's).

Do yourself a favor and audition the Belles 150A Hotrod. It's very musical and not at all bright. If you have access to Decembers Stereophile read what Sam Tellig had to say, it's a very accurate review.

i'll second lphunter2's choice. and ,if you can find one, get a hold of a warner imaging-powerful,deep bass, accurate yet sweet highs.

The BEL (Brown Electronic Labs) 1001 MkV is the smoothest most tube-like SS amp on the planet. Check out TAS Golden Ear Awards 2000 issue 127.

Nice speakers, IMO. I auditioned them twice and almost purchased them. I listened to them with ARC tube gear and a Classe integrated. They sounded better with tubes, but still great with the Classe. They also require, beleive it or not, around 500 hours of break in and if yours do not have this many hours on them, I would wait before auditioning other gear. I am not familiar with your amp. Older Adcoms were a little raspy in the HF's but that was a long time ago. You may want to try auditioning/demoing a DAC for your DVD player and see if it is the source that is bothering you. And, as Craig mentioned take a look at the cables in your system starting with the source. I picked up Harmonic Truthlink IC's used at this site for $125.00 to tame the HF's on my Castle speakers and they did the job. If you have not used isolation devices on your player you will want to do that first as well. They do not need to be expensive, Vibrapods work very well in smoothing out HF's when used on the source and also the preamp in your case. Speaker placement and room treatment (what is allowable) will tame highs. If you did not need as much power I think that the Conrad Johnson tube integrated would be a nice match for the 5.0's. That is what I was thinking anyway when I listened to them, though I never heard the two together. I would start with the basics and go from there. Good luck.