Which has a greater effect on music,int.amp or CD?

Definitely the amp in my opinion. A warm amp will make all your sources warm, if you ever add a tuner, phono, tape, etc. Getting a warm CD player is really going to limit your choices. I find some CD players called "warm" to be more like "dull". Anyway, why would you want a non-warm clinical amp?

The Complete is a nice amp for the price. I like your CD choices above. A popular choice for many in a warm CD is The Planet.

If you want more detail still on the warm side you could look at some of the Creek amps, or step up to The Complete's big brother, the YBA Integre DT.

Even though you don't include it, I would consider tweeking the warmth with your speaker cable choices. They do matter. Also adding something like the Blue Circle BC62 power cord to the amp, will bring out the warmth.

I agree with Sugarbrie - start with the amp. I'd be careful buying an amp before deciding on speakers, but if I had speakers and wanted to choose the next biggest factor, I'd focus on the amp. -Kirk

Get the CDP that has the tone you want, and then the amplification that doesn't ruin its strengths. This has advantages, especially upgrading advantages, over getting an amp that replaces the sound of the CDP with its own, although this may work. EX. I have a new friend that replaced her Arcam 72 with a $3k Ayre CDP and was astonished by the difference being passed through an $1100 LFD Mistral integreated. And I too have witnessed this, coincidentally enough with another Mistral.

**Please describe your listening experience with the Arcams, including more detail about being too 'dynamic', and the speakers and other gear you may have listened to that was not 'dynamic'.

You all are lost in audio dreamland. The very best a playback system can do is replicate what was recorded on the source material.

Of course the speakers are the prime component for that purpose. Followed by room acoustics. Then the quality of the source material itself. The rest follows. The mystique of cables is at the bottom of the list.

So why does everyone spend so much time, effort, and expense, on the everything else. No component, cable, or tweak will improve the speakers, or the room.

And of course all you can do with the mostly substandard recored material is get speakers that will reveal the truth, and a room that does not keep you from hearing it, is throw it away --or put it on the preowned market and let some other sucker have it.

Ironic, isn't it. If you do not have truely hi-fi reference recorded material you will not know if the speakers are any good. And if the speakers are not any good, you will never recognize material with sonic excellece.

If you ever consider converting, email me and we can talk about some solutions.

Otherwise, continue to argue about the various qualities of perferred distortion, and which that produces what goes with whatever other. And of course do it in a every snooty fashion.

I guess I just wasted all that money buying my high-dollar analog rig and OTL amp setup. If I had only known that getting a CD Walkman, a Technics receiver, and a pair of Sound Labs U-1 would have sounded better, I could have saved myself alot of trouble. ;^)
Thanks, Homedesign, for a newbie you sure are a know-it-all. After you've been doing this for 30 years, come back and talk to me some more.