ISO Advise on choosing Ayre or Bat power amp

there are at least two maybe three recent threads on the value of a linestage in a high end system

just search

John Atkinson ran some tests on this point a while ago and concluded he like the sound better with a pre in the system. I used a VK-300SE for many years and will say it "just makes beautiful music". Adding the VK-225SE now-or-later gives considerably more "gusto" as doubling the available power should. I'm a hard-core BAT fan as I love their pure, simple, natural sound (no fancy-schmancy -just pure music). Take it or leave it, just my advice.

Dweller-
the BAT VK-300se and the Vk-225se have the same power and serve the same purpose- except the integrated amp with the pre adds more circuitry. Aren’t I better off with just the power amp and a digital pre-DAC/streamer as a source?

i always read that the shortest path is the cleanest and best path- is this not true? Or is there something a pre-amp does that a digital pre-DAC can’t?

If your Aerial Acoustics LR-5s can be bi-wired, I'd get a used BAT VK-300SE integrated and add the VK-225SE later. This bi-amp setup will rock-down the house and sound damn fine doing it. Make sure the VK-300SE isn't too old, however, as it's been in production a long time.

Adg101-
 Both these amps put out 300wpc at 4ohms so I think that should be adequate?
Since the 4 ohms power is twice at at 8ohms, that is supposed to indicate high current....please correct me if I’m off on that!
I may consider a parasound A21+ just for the extra 200wpc into 4 ohms although I don’t know if the Parasound would have the same level of finesse, speed and linearity as the other two...?
stringreen-
yes, I would only use xlr balanced interconnects on either amp as both are fully balanced in and out!

A friend had Aerials that were kind of power hungry.   If you can find an Ayre V1XE...they have and sound much more powerful. In any case,  Ayre uses differentially balanced circuits and sound much better with XLR balanced interconnects.

I’m sure both the Ayre and BAT are very nice amps but are you sure they’ll have enough juice to push your Aerial’s to their potential, especially in your room? I would check on that before you make the purchase. I have 7B’s and on those the sweet spot was getting an amp that can deliver 250 watts at 8 ohm; amps 200 watts and less definitely worked but they fell short a little.

I don’t play loud, but on smaller amps my Aerials needed to be pushed more to be enjoyable whereas my current amp I can listen to low levels and and not feel the need to crank it up.

the ayre is excellent, sorry i have not heard the bat

if any knock on ayre's is compared to other top ss amps the deep bass can be a touch light

on the other hand ayre's have tremendously low noise floor, notes come out of deep darkness, very beautiful...