Amp upgrade from Ayre V-5xe

Highly consider the Classe Delta CA-2300 stereo power amp this is a class AB design amplifier. Did retail for $7k but this amp has been discontinued last year (2017) and nowadays it can be had at good discount if you can find a used one in after market like here on Audiogon.

The sound is very resolved, detailed, clean, dynamic, transparent, lifelike and very refined with excellent and 3D like stereo imaging. You can easily pinpoint each individual instruments and vocals within the soundstage. Good amounts of air and space between instruments and vocals. You can easily perceive subtle dynamic shifts and timbre. The soundstage has great depths, widths and heights and the presentation is not as forward and it might be a good fit for your Revel speakers, which are known to have somewhat forward sounding. This amp does not draw attention to itself and just let the music flow naturally. It has a right amount of bites without emphasizing on any particular area and frequency spectrum.

Very musical sounding amp. PRAT is excellent. Noise floor is dead quiet. Classe is very good at extracting all musical nuances and information. And the tonal is pretty neutral with a touch of warmth, depending on the cables used. Has a lot of clean power reserve.

The amp runs cool no matter how hard you drive it due to the use of Classe's proprietary cooling tunnel design, which is outside the signal path. The signal path is kept as short as possible. 

It’s worth auditioning with your speakers and see how they pair together.

Any opinions on Plinius SA-103?

It is rated lower at 125 watts at 8 Ohms, but in switchable A / AB operation

The Plinius 103 is at its best in RCA not Balanced
 You have a zero feedback balanced Dac front end and Pre
 To optimize the system as mentioned above the continuation of that design would make sense.
A preowned or new Zero Feedback Balanced Ayre VX5, VXR or MXRs would be a more musically engaging overall improvement.
 Best JohnnyR

Sorry Audioconnection, the Plinus gear is known for being very musical and mimic a tube amplifier’s sound, Ayre gear has never been known for a warm sound, rather than a clean sound without alot of bloom.

Running XLR vs RCA into a Plinus doesn’t make a difference, We have a Plinius Odeon a $18k multi channel version of the SA 201 and it sounds fantastic being run in XLR.

The very fact that you don’t endorse brand mixing is a shame, we have found that many times mixing a tube preamp from company x with amp y makes a better match. A similar approach by mixing this gentleman's system with a differently voiced amplifier may be just what he is needing.

Both the Pass gear and the Plinius gear are warmer than the Ayre sound.

And we don’t sell Plinius nor Pass so we got 0 skin in this game.

Techno dude we agree with you, the top tier brands Gryphon, T+A, Vitus, are in another class then the Pass, Ayre, class of product.

When was the last time that you say a Pass Labs or Ayre integrated at any price, compared to $120k worth of separates, or a $23k integrated compared to a $45k one and the reviewer picking the T+A gear?

OP you should borrow a bunch of different amplifiers and see for yourself what amplifier makes your system sing.


Dave and Troy
Audio Doctor NJ

Thanks @audioconnection  JohhnyR. I think you nailed it. I should stop messing around and either:

1 - Stay with my Ayre V-5xe, or

2 - Upgrade to Ayre VX-5 Twenty