Jeff Rowlands Amp and Dac vs. VAC amp and DAC

There are many brands that could be worth auditioning, including Ayre.
She chose to audition these two with occasionaly couple of others in the mix. The big question here is tubes or not. The possible question Rowland or Ayre is not very significant by comparison.
People approach things differently. With the same speakers I would compare used LAMM tube preamp/ hybrid amps and VAC, I would not consider either Rowland or Ayre except maybe older Rowland 8Ti and 9Ti with Coherence preamp.
I suggested LAMM, she doesn't want to go this direction and I understand well why. I think, she is doing all the right things within her set of parameters. She is a music lover not an audiophile and doesn't want to spend all weekends for a year to choose something that she already might've auditioned.

And..I didn't want to say it before but I will say it now. Having an excellent hearing and artistic taste, she is bothered by digital without fully realizing it more than by tubes/transistors incompleteness. Digital does not have analog's naturalness and continuity, it can at times approximate. No amp in the world can compensate for it but good amp can make the digital sound as best as it can, and that's the theoretical objective in this case.

Guido, it is impolite to say to a woman that she is not going to have as good an amp as you do. 

I might well be wrong but I think Guido was trying too impart that based upon his experience  rinpoche might be happy just using the Aeris DAC to drive the 625 versus inserting one of the preamps he mentioned