Intergrated Amp with VR4jrs

The Jeff Rowland Concentra (original version) can be had for less than $2,500. It's better than the Krell of MF you mention. A Krell 300 goes for slightly over $1,000 and some people have commented that its betters the 400 series in long term listening. Also, any of the various YBA integrated are excellent products.

The VR-4jr's do sound better with tubes. Pick up an Audio Refinement Complete. It will give you a little of the tube sound without tubes, its cheap, its more powerful than it claims.

Good luck!

I current own two 400xi for my two small rooms. I love the fast and tight sounds of the Krell for instruments and percussions. I love the sweet and soft midrange of the MF. I have gone tubes with Rogue monoblocks and its magnum pre but tubby sounds excitment last for abt only a few months. AR is still a better choice if you go tubes. CJ, Rogue are good products for the price but not quite "tube" sounds as AR. My next intergrated will be AR. Again, some listener loves colour added some doesn't.

The Jungson JA88D is worth considering. No tubes, but heavily biased into Class A (does run a bit hot). I generally prefer tubed components, and the Jungson is the only solid state amp I've owned that captures much of the dynamic, rich and spatious tube sound (also owned Plinius, Creek, Jolida hybrids, Bel Canto, LFD Mistral, Quad). At a used/demo price of around $1000, the Jungson is also a lot cheaper than most of the amps mentioned above.

Both the Krell and the Musical Fidelity would be great choices. They are getting great reviews and word of mouth. Sorry, but I have not heard the KAV400i but did listen at length to the KAV300. It was enjoyable and from posts of users the 400 seems to have taken everything good about the 300 and kicked it up a notch.

The Musical Fidelity gear is great IMHO. I demoed the Tri-Vista integrated and SACD player and it was fantastic. The A5 is said to have captured most of the performance of the Tri-Vista.

Another integrated you might want to check out is the NAD Master Series M3

And keeping with the simple theme the Krell, MF and NAD have great source components that would work well with each of them.

Tube gear sounds great but there is plenty of ss gear that sounds great also. I went from an all tube SET set up to ss and I don't feel I'm missing anything. Depending on the gear tube and ss just sound a little different fom each other and a lot of tube and ss gear sound the same. It least it does within my budget constraints, IMHO.

Good luck with your search.

Cheers