Thanks for your comments, Jason. I understand that upgrading the speakers will be the biggest difference. However, I feel the 301s are the bookshelf speakers that sound best to me in their price range. Eventually, once my soon-to-be wife (getting married next month) and I move out of our apartment, I will probably upgrade to some higher end speakers (probably a floor speaker design for mains)...maybe Axioms or something like that, though that is something to consider in the future. Music is a much bigger passion for me than HT, so I want to have the best possible 2 channel sound I can get now, using the 301s as the speakers. I know it's hard to do this while incorporating into a HT setup...but that's what I'm doing anyway

Anyway, I want to have some good amps for right now, as well as hopefully the future...I think the M-200s would suffice and give me the sound I'm looking for...as well as adding more dynamic headroom, like you mentioned. I'm considering a few other brands (like Anthem, NAD, Cambridge Audio, Adcom), but the reviews I've read on Outlaw have almost all been universally positive. It sounds like they have very good customer support, something that makes me shy away from NAD after my experiences trying to get my vintage amp fixed.

Thanks,
Mason