Recommendations for 5k upgrade

Polyglot,

I've not heard the Cary 306 but I've heard from others that it is excellent and quite elegant. With regard to the PWD MKII, if you do get a chance to audition it, make sure that you have all inputs adjusted to the NativeX setting and to use the automatic filter setting. Additionally, while all inputs sound excellent, I believe that the Coax and XLR connections are significantly better than the I2S if you use high quality coax...Nordost would be perfect for it. If you can audition MKII with the mated PW Transport, then I believe it will give the Cary a fair fight. ;-)

In any case, I'm glad you liked the new fuses. I think they're a pretty good tweak for the money.

Sounds like you're making some good, strategic choices and it's paying off.
Congrats!

Polyglot, alright! Sweet, you have the advanced version; you're doing great.

I urge you to get the set of Burson discrete Opamps as well, as this will give you ongoing complete flexibility in system building. Also, change from optic to dig coax cable for the transport and you will have another sizable improvement. You can "roll cables" and try several of them, as they are not nearly as expensive as speaker cables, and there is a wide variance in performance between different brands.

I would not necessarily assume the Cary will be superior performance-wise to its use as a transport to the EE DAC. I'm guessing the enhanced EE DAC will be better holistically than the Cary alone. The power cord and digital cable will have great sway in the final result; try it both ways. I've never let appearance stand in the way of superior performance, i.e. one box vs. two, etc. Do not assume that necessarily a single box solution to CD will automatically outperform a transport with EE DAC.

I would first get a good dig coax cable between the Sony unit and EE DAC to see if that represents a pleasing improvement for you. With the discrete Opamps from Burson and DEXA you should be able to tune this to perfection.
There is a lot of upgrade path available for you to travel no matter what decisions you pursue. :)

The improved power cords will also add considerably to the overall quality of the rig. If you take the following steps which will not cost much relatively, you should have respectable gains and may feel content to hold at that level for a while:

-PCs upgraded
-Have both Burson and DEXA complete sets of discrete Opamps available for rolling/tuning
-coaxial digital link between cd/transport and DAC

Regardless of whether you choose to do the additional discrete Opamps, the PC and digital cable upgrades should be done even if you seek a different player.

Douglas, I am already using the NordOst Silver Shadow from the EE Plus as indicated in my OP. Which brand/model would you suggest as an upgrade (Valhalla or the Transparent Reference are, budget wise, not an option for now).

As I am pleased with the Audience power conditioner and PCs, I was wondering if the digital AU24e would be a good improvement over the Silver Shadow.

Ah, missed that; very well.

One brand of cables which strike my ear as having a very pleasing balance of tonality and definition are Clarity Cables (reviewed at Dagogo.com). They are not the only game going for good cables, but a very good sounding wire for the money.

I would watch the conductor material of the digital cable; it appears the Silver Shadow uses a silver over copper and if so then likely the sound will be thinner than if you seek an all copper conductor. This will not be the case in every instance, but in most instances I have tested it follows suit.

It's unorthodox, but if you have one or two different Interconnects lying around, try one of them. You may be very surprised by the result. In many systems I have used an interconnect with a slightly more pleasing result than a digital cable of the same brand. If you are after higher definition often it can be achieved through use of an interconnect acting as a digital link. Rolling discrete Opamps along with changes to digital cables combine for a powerful system tuning set of tools.

The DAC Plus accepts AES/EBU input and whatever transport/player you have it would be an advantage to use it in most cases. Usually the best transport/DAC combinations have been through use of an all Copper XLR cable via the AES/EBU connection. It is not an absolute guarantee of the best results but often turns out to be. The sonic characteristics of silver OFC versus all copper digital cables holds regardless of whether AES/EBU or S/PDIF is used. :)

Update:

Following your comments and great advice I have upgraded

1.) Transport: to a Cary 306, more detailed, very sweet sound, I am having problem with the upsampler (which may be defective, have emailed Cary). A big step up indeed, thanks to all but esp. Zd542 for speaking very clear words.

2.) All power cables to Audience power Chord, conforming to the loom theory and based on my great experience with the Audience AdeptResponse 12T (this is just my experience as I don't want to again to start a war of words on cabling): blacker background, on the CDP and preamp I feel that the NordOst is faster and sounded better on violins in some recordings, need more time to hear the differences.

3.) all ICs from NordOst Valkyrja to Valhalla (my biggest expenditure) and not what I hoped for which is a minor upgrade so that I can sell those expensive cables: it was the biggest improvement of all: much more details, so fast, so dynamic! Very tempted to test a Valhalla power cord but all budget is gone.

4.) Fuses (thanks Vhiner for mentioning about it here) to HiFi Tuning and in the near future AMR gold so none of the devices will have standard fuse(s)anymore: this is the best bang for the buck, very recommended for all to experiment! (Again, I do not intend to start a discussion on this topic, it is just my personal experience that I wish to share).

5.) Isolation from Stillpoints and Black Diamond Racing under the source components to Symposium Jr Rollerblocks with Tungsten balls: worthwhile improvement, more solid sound staging.

Up next:
- now very much needed upgrade of the digital cable so suggestions are more than welcome here.

- will do some tube rolling and some tube proponents suggest, it is about getting a variant on the sound without buying another component and as Douglas noted, rolling opamps do the same.

As you may have noticed, I have stalled, for now, the DAC upgrade mostly due to budget constraints but more so because it has held very well against others in the past. One, less likely, alternative route is buy the new PS Audio PWD MKII and downgrade the ICs from Valhalla back to Valkyrja to stay in the extended budget but I am afraid that the overall result would be worse than the current setup.