PS Audio or Ayre?

I own both PS Audio and Ayre products. Note that PS Audio offers an upgrade path from the PerfectWave DAC to DirectStream; it is even user-installable, albeit not cheap. But still a lot less than a new DAC. With the Directstream the upgrade path is much easier as it is done via software to their FPGA chip.  Can't beat that!  Yeah it would have been nice if they had an interim-step to upgrade the PerfectWave, but a small company needs to make tough choices sometimes about where to focus their limited resources.

I own BHK pre. I can find no faults. Destination pre for me. Responds well to tube rolling. Very happy. Now looking for a phono pre....

I have the BHK Pre and the BHK Mono's. I love the flexibility of the Pre with 5 pairs each of RCA or XLR balanced. Sound quality is outstanding and since it has a tube front end you can tube roll to adjust your preferred sound accordingly. It also supports Home Theater bypass if you need that as well. So far (Over 18 months) I am quite satisfied.

Another happy BHK Pre owner here.  I've never owned Ayre, but have listened to demos (not with my speakers) and they have been nice, but not nice enough to entice me to buy one. 

Definitely PS Audio.  I once bought a ayre cd player & it would not play my CD's and no, none of my CD's had scratches on them as I am very meticulous with my stuff. The ayre also made loud distortion noises out of my speakers and I had to stop it. The was a aye player bought brand new, ayre seems to have a lot of real estate inside their boxes and has their units tweaked to play louder than the competition. I just bought a PS Audio BHK-250 amp brand new last year and I love. Go PS Audio and really, stay away from ayre. All the best to you.