I have a friend with a balanced ATI, sounds great. Theta Dreadnought is well thought of. Anthem M20 sounds terrific. If you could go the freight, I think BAT amps are incredibly good.

I've run a pair of M60 like front speakers with an Onkyo M504 - a high power 2 channel with 2 giant power meters on the front face. Most of the time, it shows it's putting out fewer than 10 watts per channel. During the really demanding passages I'm usually too involved to watch the meters, but I can't imagine it peaking at more than 100 watts per channel with any material even at close to reference volume levels. I used to use an Antem PVA-5 for the other 5 channels - I don't think you really need more than a real 100 wpc for the side and back surround channels especially driving fairly efficient speakers like Axioms.

There are folks on this board who will tell you that anyone who is familiar with basic electrical engineering would know that there's no audible difference between amps of equal power. I've owned enough amps to know that to my ears amps do make a difference.

BTW, for folks who are looking to do separates on a budget, I used 3 Onkyo M282 2 channel amps (120 wpc) with a Sony receiver as a processor and it sounded great. Picked up the M282s from ubid for a bit over $100 each.

Enjoy the Music. Trust your ears. Laugh at Folks Who Claim to Know it All.