which of these four amps for Wharfedale Elysian 4's?

no preamp

streamer straight to RME dac

unfortunately importing new into Canada has all kinds fees above and beyond that msrp, those Schiit's would run around $5400 CAD and the local used amps I mentioned are less than half that and can be re-sold easily for what I will pay

but yeah i get your point, as soon as I have some extra cash will upgrade accordingly

thank you

I can likely acquire the matching preamp to those power amps listed at a later date, and in fact would like to do so

RME direct to power amp has been working out pretty well, I started doing this previously at the suggestion of a various members both here and on the RME

forums

the RME has also worked out connected to various integrated amps into their standard line level input

ok, bought the Ayre per the multiple recommendations

bought the Kinki also as seller gave me a good price on matching preamp

thought it would be nice to have both to get a comparison

I think im done here

thanks all

speaker impressions thus far,

at their price point, simply phenomenal, class leading , class exceeding,

this was expected based on my research

i would say if you're at all interested just get em if you can deal with the drawbacks which were also expected

which are....

hard to control the bass, need room treatments and or eq, kind of standard for larger towers

NOT an audiophile speaker per se, no holography, no crazy imaging,  not crazy resolving,  I suspect the Wharfdale Dovedale may be their best 'audiophile' speaker

the Elysian 2's with subs are likely a better overall solution for most

and the Kinki power amp controls these better than the other amps and its not close, I need to look into Kinki monos, again maybe not an audiophile amp but super clean fast and powerful and the stated power has out muscled and out controlled Hegel h390, and Parasound a21+

Kinki also did this with tough to drive Dyn Special 40's and controlled them better than my last 10 amps including Parasound JC5 and Mcintosh MC402

***mac was a very very nice amp though and endgame for many

for those unaware the Kinki is a dense 50Ib's in what appears to be a standard 17" chasis

its also ugly as sin and ergonomically and functionally flawed

all meat on the bone no frills sonic goodness

the Elysians are like a big time tower from yesteryear with added refinement

cliches coming,

hearing things I never heard, Danny Boy by Jacintha, her breath and subtle mouth noises, the same with many female vocals,

piano keys with heavy weight to them.....a piano key struck live in person will feel and sound weighty, most speakers fail here imo.....plucking and strumming on strings has a clarity during the initial pluck and strum that most speakers also fail at imo

another not so abnormal downside discovered.....hearing all the background noise and noise floor in recordings..........

may need to seriously upgrade source and amp to minimize this

bad recordings play better than any speaker I've heard

example...alot of Aretha Franklin recordings are poor and they drown her voice in a hot mess of clutter....these speakers let her shine

they seem easy to drive and accurate to their 92db sensitivity spec and I suspect would do very well with tubes

I may need to get into a pair of purifi monos for the lower noise floor but that will be negated unless I can find s atreamer/dac combo with an equally low noise floor and I suspect those units would be north of 15k and out of my price range at the moment