YBA Passion vs YBA integre dt integrated????

I still own my Passion Integre and loving it! It has been 10 years now of wonderful musical enjoyment! It's a gem that I will never sell.

A few years ago I had an itch to try valve amps. So I listened to a Shindo combo, costing twice as much as the Integre. The Shindos were also a perfect match with my Devore Fidelity Nines speakers, according to many audiophiles. What can I say? The YBA Passion Integre was so much better than the Shindos in so many categories: detail, openness, bass definition, space around instruments, speed, timing...it was a shock! The Shindos had better body, but that was it! With Shindos so highly rated in the audiophile community, I didn't listen to another valve amp. I felt there was no point.

If there is a more musical amp at a sensible price, I wish someone would let me know about it.

I owned the Passion Integre and to my ears, it was not any better than my Ayre integrated (AX-7e) and not nearly as good as my BAT 300x-SE, which had a tubed preamp section. The BAT isn't that much more money than the YBA, but in my system, the BAT sounded much more relaxed, refined, and realistic, possibly due to the tubed front end. At the time I had Tyler Acoustics Linbrooks and later Merlin VSM-MXe speakers.

Hi folks. I am trying to get an amp for my Focal Electra 1008be speakers. I was looking at YBA after seeing this thread and seems that the old YBA was manufactured in France whereas the new ones are done at Shanling's facility in China. I was curious to know if I should still go for YBA Passion Integrated IA350 which is a newer offering or go for a used YBA passion integre? Also the issue is that there are no dealers closeby  :( any suggestions or advises are appreciated.