Audiokicks, I am also a Jadis Orchestra Reference owner. I should also say that I was the previous owner of Denis' (Springbok10) amplifier.
When I got the amplifier together with the JJ EL34 tubes, I began burning it in on a Friday evening, and by Sunday, with my Coincident Digital Master/Troubass subwoofers, I have never had better sound in my system. And, I have some pretty well respected, not to mention much more expensive, amplifiers. The JOR not only outclassed them, but flat out outclassed them.
If it was true that at its price, you could do much better, I would run out in a heartbeat and pay every cent of the retail price to have that sound in my system again.
A lot of what you say is correct about it being a pain in the teeth to bias, but after getting comfortable with it, I can perform the "biasing" part of the procedure in about three minutes. Having two meters makes things easier, but I can manage with one if I needed to. The task I loath is reassembling it. Still, I can think of no other tube amp that requires nearly as much effort.
If I still owned the amp, I would have holes in the bottom plate so that I would not have to disassemble the JOR when I biased it, and it would be a no muss, no fuss three minute job.
And, if the six years I got out of my Ei KT90s (averaging between 10 - 20 hours/week) is shortened tube life, then I wish all of the tube amplifiers I have owned over the years had this kind of shortened tube life. After six years, one of the KT90s was shorted with no damage to the amp (didn't know it until I measured the tubes one day), and the other three were still in the "GOOD" range by about 25%.
Now, I am personally a fan of the Cayin products, but the JOR is 3 - 4 steps up the ladder on my own personal scale.
Answering the real question of the thread, based on what I see, my vote for best tube integrated would probably be the Jadis DA50.
