I spent quite some time at the Cayin booth this year.
My brother was intesifely auditioning the Ha-2a and Ha-3a, meanwhile I was checking out the Soul 170Ha.
I always liked the Cayin headamp designs, but the Soul 170Ha is definitely the prettiest one so far.
The "bad" news is, that it can only run the KT170 and is optimized for this tube alone. It would drive other KT tubes way too hard.
That means there are zero options to tube roll the power slot. (Still options for the driver and rectifier tubes)
However Cayin gave something in return.
The amplifier offers Ultralinear and Triode Mode, just like the Ha-6a and on top a dynamic <-> soft sound signature switch. So even though you can't tube roll as much, you can still adjust the sound on the fly.
And who knows, maybe there are some tube manufacturers working on their KT170 versions, now that they become more popular.
Sound wise I liked the amplifier, very visceral and dynamic with the Susvara.
However it was very loud at the booth, which made me switch to the Liric II. With the latter I played around with all the Switches and sound configurations. Certainly something one could spend days exploring.
Unfortunately it was a few walking minutes away from the competition and therefore basically impossible to compare to similarly priced amplifiers. However I don't think it has to hide from direct comparisons.
It's probably my favourite non 300B amplifier