Integrateds: Why do they all SUCK?

@beetlemania,

I agree with you.  You would spend at least twice the price of an AX-5 Twenty to better its performance.  I just went through an fairly exhaustive journey over the last two years.   The Ayre is a game changer for sure.  I didn't mention it since OP wanted and integrated with phono stage.  

i agree with 1markr - if you have a good pre-amp - then the amp can sound great - in my experience a good pre-amp matters more!

Not to belabor the preamp point, but many listeners have no idea what upgrading the preamp does for a system. When I was in my Naim phase, I remember thinking I needed a better amplifier, but upgrading to the next level of preamp brought the power and finesse to the system that I mistakenly thought were attributable to the amplifier. Until you actually experience what a good preamp can do, it's hard to allocate a lot of money towards a bunch of inputs and a volume control.  And that's all cheap preamps are - but good preamps do much more.  And you pay for it.  

Accuphase E-470 with phono option board and DAC option board. Paired with my ATC HTS40's, I can hardly imagine a more refined, sophisticated and musical component.  

One of the biggest problems with integrated amps historically is proximity of internal components, for example, and in particular, noise levels resulting from proximity of a power transformer to the low level pre-amp circuitry and even worse lower level phono circuitry, if that included as well.

Having said that, the Bel Canto C5i digital integrated, about half the size of a shoe box, is perhaps the quietest (and best sounding overall) amplifier I’ve ever owned, quieter perhaps even than the almost $10K worth of separates I use currently in my larger main system. I suspect the fact that it is an all digital amp design contributes to that greatly. I gave it a shot to test the waters with the latest and greatest all digital amp technology and may never look back again. It seems all digital amp technology these days is a game changer!