Next Biggest Improvement after Speakers ?

You left one out: the ROOM.

Brian Walsh

All good answers, the room is very important and can be 50% of the sound or more sometimes. The Speaker and amp marriage is critical. I recently upgraded to different speakers and when I got them home, they sounded like crap, not musical at all. I tried a bunch of preamps to get the sonics to improve but in the end chaning the amp gave me the synergy that I needed. The a good source is critical to get you to the next level. One you have the sonics you are looking for then you need to see what peramp will work with your system, every component sounds different as do cables, rooms, etc. so that you time to find what you are looking for and experiment.

Happy Listening.

Loudspeaker

Amp
Preamp
Room
Source
Cables

speakers, amps, and room can be thought of as one synergetic system. Get that right, then concentrate on getting the source+preamp part right, then mate that to your speaker+amp+room combination (consider voicing, impedance matching, gain issues, etc between the two synergetic systems). wires and racks and tweaks, etc come last.

The source+preamp dictates what you [i]can get[/i], and the speakers+amp+room dictate what you [i]do get[/i]. Or maybe it's the other way around? Either way. Some say source is most important, some say speakers+amp+room are most important. The dilemma (or is it paradox?) is they are both right.

Your source is most important, IMO.