what will make the greatest differance in sound.

All the units we talked about are good but it sounds like you want an example with little or no hassle. If you get ML preamp you will improve in all these areas and it is built like a tank and has the coolest volume knob in the business (and the best read out). You could save yourself quite a bit of money by buying the 38S instead of the 380S. You can pick up a 38S for $1900 to $2400 where a used 380S is $3400 and up.

If you want to stay with all ML the 39 or 390 are well made CD players and many think they are among the best. The transport tray is clearly the slickest one in the industry.
ML is known for service, reliability, and upgradability...oh, and the white gloves.

Now if it was me, I would go with the Mephisto or Electrocompaniet just for a change. The Electro is apparently better on bass but the Mephisto is warmer slightly more musical. The Meph is a sexy looking French top loader probably one of the best looking units in all of audio. The Electro is a top loader also and is quite nice looking in its own right.

Cables: I would recommend Nordost SPM (unless you can afford Valhalla but they are probably overkill) for interconnects and speaker cable. Many reviewer’s and phile’s reference. These cables are known for neutrality, speed, openness, and tight bass.

If you want to talk about other options email me and I would be happy to talk to you about options.

cd

I always argue that speakers make the greatest difference in sound. That does not mean that you should go right out and buy new reproducers. You need to discover within yourself the kind of sound that you like. Do you want a warm, enveloping sound (heirs to the "West Coast" sound of our forebears) or something cool and reflective ("BBC monitor" sound) or something analytical and ultra-precise. I'm overgeneralizing madly, as someone will doubtless remind me, but I hope you get the idea.

My point is that the speaker, more than any other component, will establish the foundation for the kind of sound you like. Having set that cornerstone, you then choose electronic components consistent with your overall sonic goal. There's no magic to this synergy business, simply a clever and careful matching of the strong points of each link in the signal chain to yield an overall consistent endpoint without concatenating so many weak points that you have unacceptable defects in the finished product.

Listen, listen, listen. Not only to everybody's system you can get access to but also to as much live music as possible. Define your own tastes. Figure out how much you can spend. Buy what you like. Enjoy.

will

There are a lot of good suggestions. My suggestions are:
1. Get rid of the Monster cable, my god, you have a great system, this will give you a serious improvement.

2. You are kind of waffling between preamp and CD player. I think you should consider a CD player with vol. control, such as Wadia. The critique of these are that a low volumes they lose resolution. With your inefficient speakers, you will not usually be at the bottom of the volume range so you can really take advantage of "1 less link" in the audio chain.

Anyway this is just something to think about, plus you get to lose a box to make it less cluttered.