A. A. Capitole owners - what's the next step??

I agree with all of the above. It is hard for me to believe that this is the weak link in your system. That is one hellava cdp you have there. In fact, (I own the Prima)if I had a different wife I'd go for the Capitole in a flash. I would think about: new ICs, power conditioning for your front end, Sistrum SP 1 to couple your cdp, etc. etc. There are oodles of tweaks that you can do to improve the sound. Why don't you (if you dare, lol) tell us what the rest of your listening rig is about. warren :-)

I don't own one of these babies but if I did, I would be putting my hobby money into music.

i owned and really enjoyed a AA Capitole, SE. Obviously you COULD upgrade the unit to SE status, which upgrades the caps and puts in a cryo'd tube. I would not be able to speak for what it would add, since I only ever had the SE version. I also know of someone (user FrankPiet) who had the volume attenuator modded to great effect.

I also agree that power cables and isolation are CRITICAL on any digital front end: I used the HRS iso platform and electraglide epiphany to great effect....

Ultimately, I ended up getting the Reimyo CDP and have not looked back. It's silly expensive and does not have a volume control, so would not meet your criteria. There's always the Meitner separates that do have a built in preamp stage....

OTOH, your stock player is mighty fine - so what specifically do you want to improve on?

Dous yours have the analog passthu? Your AAQ is future proof as you can upgrade the circuit board and then you can even run a tuner through it and forget about the pre altogether. The repair guy in Texas at Digital Systems can do this. Probably the other upgrades, too.

I own a AA MKII and frankly you won't find anything better sounding for the same money. I agree with the upgrades or even changing the caps yourself. You might want to get yourself a Black Diamond Source Shelf to sit your player on. I found that this dramatically changes what you'll hear. I went to MIT V3.1 I/C's from Cardas Golden Reference. This too had a noticeable impact on what the end result was. You have a lot of options to get better sound............period!