Integrated amp: VAC, DK ref, Ayon Sunrise or Karan

My business partner purchased the Ayon Audio made in Austria, by the way, 300B integrated amplfier. Wow, the sound is fantastic, the build is remarkable and it looks terrific. Ayon Audio is a big deal in Europe and considered top quality audiophile gear. I will be selling my VSi55 Audio Research and making a change soon. I also saw the Ayon Sunrise II, can't decide which one to get.

The Karan KA-i180 will drive your speakers with no problem! Check out the TNT review. I have been using this integrated for 3 years after going through the upgrade paths over and over. My last amp was a Melos MAT-180 tube amp with Melos' Maestro preamp. This was a very good combo, but the Karan is better. You owe it to yourself to try one. People that own these rarely get rid of them. My Melos separates were $8k retail. IMHO you would need to spend more then $12K to get better. I have spoken to other owners of the KA-i180 that compared it to $20 separates. My speakers are Merlin VSM-M (89db) and I can drive them to very loud levels with no problem. Integrated amps are a great way to compact your system. The Karan integrated will not compact the sound quality! There are some who think separates sound better (I was one) until I heard the Karan KA-i180.

Are the Magicos a 1 ohm load?

Consider Butler and Blue Circle.

DK puts out upto 800W into a 1ohm load! Plenty of power for the Magico's.

In my opinion, the Magico Minis need more power than any of these integrateds can deliver. If you have this $20,000 pair of speakers, find a way to to get separates and go for high power.

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

The speakers are Magico Mini, and the digital gear is EMM labs

I think you need to be more specific about your needs before anyone gives you a recommendation. For example, what are your speakers, room dimensions, music tastes and preferred volume in listening? These are just a starter of questions I would need answered before I would even try to make a suggestion. I personally have a VAC amp and I'm very happy, but my amp might not be appropriate in your system. Do I make sense to you?

Not familiar with Ayon or Sunrise (Chinese perhaps?) but I am familiar with DK and I know of the reputation that VAC gear has. I honestly have never seen anything negative written about any VAC integrated (from the press or consumers) and that's rare in this industry. Sonically they have a stellar reputation in the audiophile world. You pay for that performance however, they are rather expensive. Since you say cost is not an object, out of those 4 choices my opinion is go with one of VAC's intergrateds. DK makes some very high value high performance hybrid intergrateds but VAC tube integrateds are in another league. You asked for an opinion, this is mine.