integrated help please

I've bought the Peachtree Grand Integrated last week. It requires ~250 hours of breakin. I've only pout ~30 hours so far. I'm using them with a new speakers (Joseph Audio Pulsar) so can't really do a meaningful comparison to my old gears. But I'd say it already sounds great. The looks and the build is very good. Having the Dac, Preamp and amp building into one chasis with the best possible matching and shortest distance electrons have to travel. The sound is ahh so glorious.

I've two compalins so far about the GI. No balanced input/output support. Volume control rotary knob doesn't glow or anything, so its hard to tell in a semi-dark room which position the volum knob is.

I've thought long and hard about the flexibility having a separate dac. I'd have used a $1k-$2k separate dac. My previous dac was W4S Dac-2. I could easily live with the dac inside of GI for next 4-5 years or so. If I can't resist buying a dac in next 2 years, I can always use GI as preamp and power amp combo with a outboard dac.

Another vote here for the AX-7e and a separate DAC. The Ayre is a stellar piece of equipment, and there are so many dac options that would bring you in at your spend, you could dac roll until you dial in the perfect sound to your taste.

Radiohead99: How does the dac in the grand integrated compare to the W4S Dac-2? Also, how does the class d amp sound?

I love it when an OP says they bought something and talk about it, and someone else comes along and recommends a component. Am I the only one who reads the thread before posting?

wat about the more expensive 600i or the reg a osiris