Best upgrade for the money ?

Hi Pops...That's some nice gear you have there, but I'm a little bit thrown back by your statments. Your saying the Polks sound as good as the Vandy's just different??? Although the Vandy's have never been the speaker of my choice (a little bit on the warm side for me) I still think they sound pretty good. I certainly feel they do almost everything more right than the Polks could ever hope to. Vandy's strong suit has always been that they are very open sounding & have excellent imaging & soundstaging capabilties. Something the Polks could never come close to. Not to mention the Vandy's are more nuetral sounding than the Polks. You may want to try replacing your cables if your not hearing these differances. I've always found MIT to be some what veiled. My philosophy is to start with really good speakers (put your $'s there) than slowly put the right matching components in front of them to really get them to sing. To start with mid-fi speakers such as Polks & then put high resolution electronics in front them in my opinion seems a waste. Reason being...simply because those speakers will never allow you to realize the full benifits of high resolution electronics. Rob: your getting an awful lot of information here which can be confusing. Simple rule of thumb is as you may well know...the speakers will affect the sound of any system the most, than the source (CD player, Transport/DAC or phono), preamp, amp, speakers wires, interconnects, lastly power cords. In that order. One other component which would make more sonic improvement than any of the wires is the PS Audio power plant as mention in one of these threads.

Thanks Sagger - Let me clarify myself a little. I should have said the Vandy's are better because I wouldn't have shelled out cash if they weren't. They are in the same vein as the Polk's, a little warm, good imaging but more open. They are my primary speaker now no doubt. But I'm willing to be you never heard these Polks with good ancillary equipment with the SDA portion removed (unplugged). I bought these about 10 years ago because I didn't know any better. I was driving them with a Yamaha receiver so that tells you what I knew about highend then. I have upgraded my amp 3 times, preamp 3 times, CD once, and cables too many times to count. I do disagree with you regarding MIT, I think they are best especially the latest shotguns. My point is every time I made an upgrade the system as a whole improved, sometimes dramatically. I think the Polk's have an uncanny ability to recreate the live experience (as much as possible anyway) in terms of size of images and soundstage. Anyway, call me crazy, because I am a little, but that's my take.

Gotcha Pops... you could be right on the MIT's. I'm more familiar with the older wire.

Way to hang in there POPS.Everybody hears things differently.Love the honesty. I ain't gonna take any side on the Polks;never heard them. I do agree w/Sagger/as do most knowledgable folk. It is hard to start at the top;but if the speaker doesn't reveal enough, what can you actually tell? Most of us have to upgrade incrementally. The room/resonance/placement would be the place to start. Most of the posters have pointed plenty of opinions/just about all good ones.I believe the speakers are the best place to start;again not saying the Polks are the problem.Like Pops's system,he likes what he hears.One needs to decide what you are looking to improve Power chords are seldom system dependent,and you keep them as you upgrade. As in win/win.