Bigkidz, you hit it on the nail. Unfortunately I don't know what I am looking for myself outside of just exploring what can help improve the current sound. I predominantly listen to classic rock and roll (mostly Floyd, Led Zep, Who) and then jazz (Dave Brubeck, Miles, Monk etc) and then a few odd categories in between at times. My desire to improve the sound came up when I noticed differences between CDs that I was playing to the corresponding recording streamed from the iMac. The difference was primarily in the separation of instruments which sounded very good irrespective of the source on the jazz recordings but not so much on the rock and roll ones. Hence I started questioning whether the recordings themselves were the culprit or it was something in the setup that needed a boost...Looks like all roads are currently leading to a good DAC so I will explore that option. I guess my final goal is to have the ability to get CD like sound but through the convenience of a music organizer like iTunes etc. so that I can listen to various different songs/artists without loading/unloading cds.
