Someone just dropped cash into your lap

Assuming that your speakers aren't broken, the source will give the best improvement for money spent. A low priced speaker can at least attempt to reproduce what you feed it. No speaker, no matter how good, can reproduce sound that it is never fed. Getting the info in is paramount. The second thing is preserving it on the way to your ears. This is not to minimize the need for good speakers, as I have been involved in speaker design and building for many years. And I appreciate the importance of them too. I love great speakers, and I would always try to do them justice by giving them the best source possible to work with. However, you can never overcome a poor source with great speakers.

That's a tough one. If you define source very broadly as anything in the chain prior to the speakers, I'd pick source. Specifically, I'd dramatically upgrade cables, analog and pre-amp. I know I'm cheating a bit here, but that's where my system is weakest. The Montana KAS and Sierra Denali amps are very nice and I can live with them for a long while (we'll see). My cabling needs serious help but I'm waiting until I move into my new house and unpack my system before trying new combinations.

So, to answer your question, I would put money into those areas I have not been putting major bucks into before. As many have stated, "more money" does not always equal "better system", but I think it would take some cash to find the right combination and there are several areas of focus: Pre-amp (tube) at $5-$10k, cables (front to back) at $2-$15k, analog (turntable, arm, cartridge, phono-amp) at $10-25k. I'm drooling already. Too bad great analog is so pricey. Oh, and if source includes album, cd and sacd purchases, well -- let's go ahead and add $10-20k there. I'll be happy to let anyone know where they may send a check for $50-70k if you e-mail me. Thanks in advance.

well my amp and preamp are already at the end of the road, so i would go with grand utopias.

Of course the amount can change things, but to give an answer, I would have my SCD-1 SACD/CD player modded.

MIT Oracle V1.1