My latest upgrade

Natalie, are you confident my suggestions would not net better sound than Steve spending his entire budget on a CDP?

Sub the 541 is more like it. Still feel based on his other nice gear a Better source is required.

I am from the school of Source being the most important part in the chain.

No amp Speaker or pre can change the original signle.

Thanks for everyone's help. I actually decided to go with the Ah! Njoe Tjoeb. It sounds like a very nice tube CDR with lots of future tweaking opportunities.

I'll let everyone know how it sounds after I've had a chance to break it in.

Steve

Sounds like you made a great choice Steve. Natalie, I agree, the source is ultimately the most important part of the equation, but exceptional sound requires that a number of elements be optimized. The suggestions I made are applicable regardless of which source is chosen. The NAD 514 was a good choice simply because it is a really good performer at a very low price, allowing other beneficial systems components to be purchased within the given budget. I am fully pursuaded, from personal experience, that a $1,000 spent as I have suggested would yield superior results to spending the entire budget on the CDP.

I got the Ah! Njoe Tjoeb in yesterday and I have to say already I'm very happy. I was a little worried that all the positive feedback for Kevin at Upscale Audio was bogus feeds from friends of Kevin. I can happily report that that's not the case. I've been extremely pleased. He threw in an extra set of Rocket Logo tubes I'm playing with them right now. I haven't tried out the stock Phillips tubes, only because I heard that they were not the smoothest sound.

I can say that out of the box this CDR sounds great! Really smoothed out the sound in my room and took away the harshness and brightness. I still have some room tweaks to do but this source upgrade has made a HUGE difference.

Thanks again to all!

Steve