Next Biggest Improvement after Speakers ?

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.

The smart ass answer would be the next biggest improvement after 'buying' the speakers is

1. placing them in the correct locations in your listening room

2. treating the room.

Then get a good amp to load them to your room. Then re-treat the room again (to dial in bass response and soundstaging/imaging, which would all improve with a better amp). This answer may give you a little more to work with.

FWIW - normally I subscribe to the idea that source is more important, but if you subscribe to the idea that speakers are more important (no more right than my POV, no one has stereos 'figured out') then speaker+amp+room loading is your next step.

then do source - cd or phono? that will dictate what source or preamp or linestage your need. active/passive, cd direct into amps? phono? how much gain (linestage and or phono) will you need? is the output from your digital source poorly designed? do you need a buffer? tubes to sweeten it up, etc? There are many schools of thought and they all have their advantages and drawbacks. But it's all about building a single synergetic system in the end. It just varies on how one approaches and attacks the problem. No right or wrong answers. Well, err, those you suggest $300 dvd sources for $22k speakers should be shot on sight. But everything else is OK. :-)