Recommendations for 5k upgrade

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.

Polyglot,

Wow! You've been busy and it sounds like you've made excellent choices. I also subscribe to the loom theory. Too bad you can't afford Nordost's flagship digital cable. I use Shunyata's Zitron Python digital and suspect the Lessloss may be similar based upon reports from others. If it is, it's an outstanding cable.