To integrate or not...

Love my Luxman. :)

I kind of went all over, including monoblocks. The Luxman solved a lot of issues for me, including my love of meters, but seriously things like reduced cabling and space, but fabulous sound stage, and tonal balance and extension, plus excellent and transparent tone controls.

With reasonably efficient, and well behaved speakers, it would be hard for me to justify going back to a separate pre/amp setup.

Tube integrateds are hard to beat. Where you say you can't change interconnects, what I see instead is not having to spend a lot on a good interconnect, without which separates simply cannot compete. Oh and power cord, cones, shelf, fuse. Having to buy twice as much stuff simply makes no sense. This from a guy who had a very good McCormack DNA1 amp and went to tube integrated, and never have seen anything to compare. Not without spending a whole lot more money anyway.  


Raven is another one to look at. Similar to Prima Luna but better made, and in Texas not China, and by Texans not Swedes or whatever euro country it is designed Prima Luna. Also Raven has a switchable sub out crossover so you can run full range or choose your crossover. Being made in Texas I would definitely be giving them a call.

Thank you both for that; very helpful. 

I think I'm still a bit scared at the thought of making a mistake!

I'm in the UK & there is nowhere to hear a Raven. Interesting you should mention them as I wanted to hear their amps a couple of years ago. What did you get after the McCormack DNA1?


I have also looked at L-509x... Is the phono stage good?