Diving into the world of tubes...help needed!

Ditch tone control. Ditch separates. Add Raven integrated to the list.

You'll get far more for your audio dollar with integrated vs separates. Prima Luna is European based made in China. Good luck with that.

Raven is all American and with outstanding rep for customer service. 

Hard to go wrong with tubes, especially not at this level where they all outshine SS right across the board. Adding tone control just might do it though....

@millercarbon I like tone control for a lot of 'correcting' of recordings so that they sound good to me.  I know many will disagree, but eh, it is what it is.

Nearly CAD$4000 for their cheapest integrated is a little much for me. Nothing wrong with made in China if it's quality! Which apparently both the PrimaLunas have.
Customer service would be nice though.

The nice thing about separates is that you can often place your amps near the speakers, keeping your speaker cables short. Tube amps are more sensitive to speaker cables; keeping them short helps out with resolution. If you decide you want more power/resolution/etc. its not that hard to change out a preamp or amp, as opposed to an integrated setup.

The other advantage of separates is each bit of the system does not share the same power supply (which reduces distortion) and crosstalk is simply going to be lower. 
I'm with millercarbon about tone controls. I think you'll find that once the system has proper resolution and a musical nature that tone controls are no longer needed. One thing about tone controls- their introduction into the circuit will **always** increase noise, decrease resolution and bandwidth, introduce coloration and distortion. That's a thing you can count on. The reason is that tone controls require an active circuit to make up for the gain that they otherwise consume. Additionally even when the controls are set flat they often aren't really flat unless they are switched like Harmon Kardon did on their Citation 1 preamp. If the tone controls can be switched out that is helpful, but I've serviced a lot of amps where that switch was actually the problem- due to corrosion of the contacts, even on a newer piece.

@atmasphere I see the advantages to separates.  Interesting that you point out about the speaker cable length.  Unfortunately I don't really have a room that would work in...maybe one day!
I understand what you're saying about tone controls, I hope that while auditioning I don't miss them and can eventually dismiss them.  But my current setup only sounds good when I use them.  Not that it sounds bad without them, but they bring so much life to the music.
The Loki tone control I'm considering does have a relay controlled bypass, so it is a true bypass.  At least it's got that going for it :)

Hello Atmasphere,
You make a compelling case for the advantages of separate audio components. Does one have to reach a certain price point for this advantage to manifest?

Some advocates of integrated amplifiers would say the signal path is shorter/simpler and that the preamplifier and power amplifier sections are ideally suited to each other (And an interconnect and power cable are eliminated). There are very reasonable arguments to be made for either approach.

I’m thoroughly happy with my tube separates based system but I could see someone making the case for example, a Gryphon or say a Virus integrated amplifier. Or saying that at the lower cost point the spectrum it’s difficult for  separates to compete on a value/performance basis. I would imagine that a number of audiophiles face this dilemma when shopping for audio components.
Charles