New amp or new cd player?

I see the interconnects as your first weak link. You should do some swapping and breaking in. Those IC's could be choking the sound before your McIntosh even gets ahold of the signal. Try some Kimber Heroes or something from Transparent that's about the same or a little higher quality level than your WaveLengths.

Next, is it just me, or are high priced CD players a wrong-headed approach to digital sound? So much of the cost of an expensive CD player goes into getting a jitterless read off the polycarbonate disc, which itself is prone to built-in jitter plus the jitter that results from reading from a spinning piece of plastic. Why not go for a playback system that minimizes or eliminates jitter from the equation?

Examples:

Get a Lavry or Benchmark DAC. I'm not sure about the Lavry, but the Benchmark does its own re-clocking, so any jitter in the initially read data stream should largely be irrelevant. With that in mind you could continue to use your Onkyo as a transport. Or get an Oppo DV-980H for a whopping $169.

Get a Macintosh laptop and use it as a server. I think iTunes 8.0 or later on a MacBook (playing lossless digital music files) sounds better than a lot of CD players.

If you go with a computer-based solution, you can also improve the sound with a USB-based DAC such as the Benchmark DAC-1 USB or something (far more expensive) from Wavelength.

Get one or two iPod Classics to use as servers. Using ALC you could fit about 250 GB (420 hours) of lossless music on each one. Get a Wadia iTransport to extract the digital data stream and send it to a good DAC.

Thanks for all the responses. I actually just ordered some Transparent MusicLink Super IC's. Was thinking about picking up a bel canto 2 dac, but didnt see any available here on Audiogon.

Still thinking about buying a used cdp, 2K$ and under.
Maybe the classe 102, mac 201, or even the naim 5i.

I am definately interested in going the hard disk route, just havent decided what the best way to implement it would be. I have all my music on itunes from now on my laptop, but it is encoded in 192kps AAC, so that i can fit my entire collection on an ipod classic (and so it fits on my laptop for that matter). I am thinking about buying a apple mini, or whatever its called, and hooking that up to my system and my flat screen, and using it solely as a music server. Basically it would be like a more expensive apple tv, although I would have the ability to burn cds directly to it in a lossless format without affecting my collection of aac files for ipod use. I like simplicity and I dont want a buncha different little boxes in my av unit. BUt thats another issue, and how I should implement that is a whole 'nother thread.. Looking forward to responses when I get around to asking that question..

I owned a 6450 for about 1 year. I would suggest some other upgrades to bring your system to a similar component level. While you are doing this get out and listen to some other brands and some tube amps too.

The 6450 is good, better for me IMO than the 6300 because it has nice controls to fill in if the CD is flat or if you want a little more body.

I think you will have to spend an additional 1k on an amp after you sell the 6450 to make much difference and perhaps $500 on a cd player, maybe an Apollo or something. Can you be more specific about what you want to hear differently in your system?

Bjesien:

Perhaps this is a little too abstract of a description but I feel like right now my system sounds very good (this is my first endeavor into high end audio), but there is nothing amazing about it. I guess I would like a deeper soundstage, and more of a three dimensioanl feeling to the sound. When I auditioned the gallo's they were being powered by a marantz reference amp, and they sounded more spectacular, atleast in the highs. Honestly, I prefer the balance of the sound with my 6450 over the marantz, but the soundstage and imaging were better with the marantz..There was more space and air with the marantz Maybe this was the room?

What do you think of picking up a classe cap-2100 here on audiogon to replace the mac? I like the look of the mac alot, and I would rather try other things before switching the amp, but Ive heard very good things about the cap-2100. I have heard the cap2100 with b&w 805s and really like it, but i guess Id have to do a direct comparison with it and my mac to see if thats the difference im looking for.

I also like the bass/treble controls on the 6450. I havent ever had to use the treble control yet, but I do like using the bass control to thicken up thin sounding cds or adding extra bass punch in certain songs. I also like the 6450 because it is not as big as all the current macs. It seems the new ones are massive when they dont need to be. Their amps are way bigger than pretty much everyone elses.

As for now, I have new IC's on the way and I will probably update the cdp before changing out the mac.

Do one thing at a time. Put the new ICs in and give them at least 50 hours to run in before evaluating again. Otherwise, if you do a bunch of changes simultaneously, you may just get a mish-mash that still lacks synergy.

Instead of buying another CD player, look into getting a good DAC--a Lavry A10, Benchmark DAC-1, etc. A couple days ago I got an email from Audio Advisor offering the PS Audio Digital Link III on sale at $699, but they haven't updated the web page to corroborate that yet.