Integrated amp: VAC, DK ref, Ayon Sunrise or Karan

Not familiar with Ayon or Sunrise (Chinese perhaps?) but I am familiar with DK and I know of the reputation that VAC gear has. I honestly have never seen anything negative written about any VAC integrated (from the press or consumers) and that's rare in this industry. Sonically they have a stellar reputation in the audiophile world. You pay for that performance however, they are rather expensive. Since you say cost is not an object, out of those 4 choices my opinion is go with one of VAC's intergrateds. DK makes some very high value high performance hybrid intergrateds but VAC tube integrateds are in another league. You asked for an opinion, this is mine.

I think you need to be more specific about your needs before anyone gives you a recommendation. For example, what are your speakers, room dimensions, music tastes and preferred volume in listening? These are just a starter of questions I would need answered before I would even try to make a suggestion. I personally have a VAC amp and I'm very happy, but my amp might not be appropriate in your system. Do I make sense to you?

The speakers are Magico Mini, and the digital gear is EMM labs

I've spent a lot of time with DK and some with Ayon and VAC.

VAC has a range of offerings varying from medium to high priced. They are all tube, although if I remember correctly, at least some of them are solid state rectified.

The Ayon I've heard at CES were extremely expensive and sounded AMAZING. I think they were fairly high powered SET but I may be wrong.

I guess the most I could say is that all of the offerings that I've heard from these firms were excellent in their price range. I don't think I've ever heard any piece by any of these firms that I would not thoroughly enjoy living with.

The DK does need experimentation with tubes and also I found it necessray to leave it on 24/7 for optimal sound quality (probably due to it being a tube/solidstate hybrid).

Art