Audiogon rocks with.......

Yep, that's what I sold mine for.

I forgot about the spkr break-in when I was writing & if they need more hrs. they could get a bit hard sounding when you push them. I broke my VR4GenIII's in with a V-3 so by the time I put the 5x in the system they had about 6 mo. on them.

Also before I sold the 5x I had a chance to horizontally bi-amp with the 5x on top & 1x on the bottom so I know it can deliver a very sweet mid-range.

In case you like to play loud it was very easy to get 100 dB at the listening spot but I didn't want to push it past 105, as I felt it was nearing it's ability to stay cohesive. With the bi-amp configuration there seemed to be unlimited headroom & at 105 it was amazing.

Conversely, there were many nights (wee hrs. of the morning) I'd play at the lowest possible setting & although there wasn't much bass presence it was a very enjoyable presentation.

I hope it works out for you.

Let the speakers break in fully before you make any big decisions. I have recently broken in two different sets of new speakers and was reminded of how big of a deal this can be. In both cases the speakers were univolving until they played for at least 200 hours. I had them in a separate room and let them play loud 24/7. I would walk in and check out the sound each day. With both speakers there was a point where something had just happened from the day before and things began sounding right.

I'd bet a lot of guys end up selling off speakers that they would eventually love if they just had put more play time on them. It's tough when they are in the living room and the whole house is affected by playing them loud full time.

Going from Counterpoint components to most of the newer Ayre gear would be a major step forward, at least in my opinion.

One thing that you might want to try, and this may sound "weird" or "over the top" to some, is to try damping the tubes. Have you ever heard someone refer to "glare" or "hardness" in the upper mids / lower treble region as sounding "glassy"? Figure it out how / where that term came from. Microphonic tubes introduce ringing and smearing into the system.

Other than that, you may have some impedance matching problems between the Counterpoint preamp and the Ayre amp. We went through the same thing with my Father's system when he was using a Counterpoint pre. I replaced it with a used $200 SS preamp and the results were staggeringly superior in every respect. While cabling can be a "band-aid" for such a problem, one would really need to find components that were either more stable and / or more suitably matched in terms of impedances.

I would also give the speakers a little more settling time and / or look elsewhere in the audio stream for problems. The tweeter that Bobby uses is known for being merciless in terms of revealing high frequency flaws. The use of the Ayre Acoustics ( imagine that?!?! ) disc may work wonders for your system in this regards.

Out of curiosity, are you using the EVS modified Panasonic DVD as a player or as a transport for the Modwright MSB DAC? Sean
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Interesting idea's guys,thanks.Am using the Panasonic as a transport Sean,though when I got it from EVS a couple of months ago,I remember Ric saying he recommends using it as a player,though I cannot remember why.As usual you are right about the Ayre being a step up.It was real musical and dynamic,would like to play it again in a few months.Bob