pacmi03, the Ayre K5xe was their entry level at the time more than 10 years ago, so it is normal that it is beaten in performance by newer designs. Your friends that use it with 30k monoblocks are bottlenecking their system big time...according their system is not bottlenecked elsewhere in the first place, may I suggest for them to try something better. The K5xe has a nice timbre, but it`s older resistive design is eating resolution and transparency, that was my experience with it in my system.
I am not selling anything, just a normal audiophile that tried different gear overtime.
