I've spent a lot of time with DK and some with Ayon and VAC.
VAC has a range of offerings varying from medium to high priced. They are all tube, although if I remember correctly, at least some of them are solid state rectified.
The Ayon I've heard at CES were extremely expensive and sounded AMAZING. I think they were fairly high powered SET but I may be wrong.
I guess the most I could say is that all of the offerings that I've heard from these firms were excellent in their price range. I don't think I've ever heard any piece by any of these firms that I would not thoroughly enjoy living with.
The DK does need experimentation with tubes and also I found it necessray to leave it on 24/7 for optimal sound quality (probably due to it being a tube/solidstate hybrid).
Art
VAC has a range of offerings varying from medium to high priced. They are all tube, although if I remember correctly, at least some of them are solid state rectified.
The Ayon I've heard at CES were extremely expensive and sounded AMAZING. I think they were fairly high powered SET but I may be wrong.
I guess the most I could say is that all of the offerings that I've heard from these firms were excellent in their price range. I don't think I've ever heard any piece by any of these firms that I would not thoroughly enjoy living with.
The DK does need experimentation with tubes and also I found it necessray to leave it on 24/7 for optimal sound quality (probably due to it being a tube/solidstate hybrid).
Art