Preamp... Solid State or Tube

I've never heard the Ayre pre you're considering, but I did own an Aesthetix Calypso for a while. 

You might want to look into Modwright preamps.  They are spectacular and should do well with your power amp (and dac).  While well below your stated budget, I picked up an SWL 9.0SE and was stunned by how good it was - I find it FAR superior to the Calypso.  If you're planning on spending up to $10k, I would think looking at some of Dan's higher end pre's would be worthwhile.

@lalitk - are you running very long IC's?

if fully balanced is a must, perhaps take a look at Atma-Sphere.  no HT bypass, but that's easy enough to work around... just run the main outs from your Krell processor to any analog input on the preamp and set the preamp to the same level (12:00, 3:00, unity, etc) when using the processor.  HT bypass is nothing more than a means to bypass the volume control in the preamp, effectively passing the signal with no attenuation.