In my tyro, neophytic opinion, after asking the same question here and to other people, is that first and foremost it is getting enough power to drive your particular speakers, period. Depending on their sensistiviy, the desired SPL in your room size. Once that is achieved, its only a question of how clean the power is, Signal to noise ratio and THD, all of which most decenet amps/receivers have so low it is unoticable (am I somewhat correct?). I believe amps do not (or shouldn't anyways) color the sound in any way. They should be absolutely transparent, just the source material amplified and sent to the speakers. I always hear things like "Marantz has that nice warm, middy sound". I believe these to be generally fallacies. Let me reiterate again, I am an amateur in every sense!
