Ia a good amp more important than a good DAC?

Tak the step forward, get the SIM. If you are hooked on Maggies (no reason not to be) you are likely to use SS, and the SIM is a good choice. As has been suggested by most, the amp/speaker combo is critical where is most decent digital sources will do fine for you. The SIM/Maggie sounds like a good long-term combo.

Regarding source first, would you rather have sushi from the best independant Japanese chef in the big city if it had to be delivered to your house in a biker's back pack on a hot August day, or would you rather go to a Legal Seafood, where your fish could be delivered by a short walk from the kitchen to your table?
Jult - I think we agree. Upgrading parts of the system which are not the weakest link will still yield improvements, but just not as much as they should. I'm thinking of my system's cables. I had changed major components over the years, with some good results, but not until I changed the cables did I notice a huge improvement. Now, I can go back and change out some of the components I have not sold yet, and hear bigger differences between them than i oculd before I changed cables. I think the cabe;s were the weak link, and were preventing my other improvements from having the impact they should have.

Thanks, Unsound!

Though I'm in the "amp first" camp in this thread, I still feel the source is definitely important. In fact, critically important.

One trend this type of argument (more commonly: speakers or source) often follows is to dismiss the importance of the other side of the argument altogether. Most of the audiophiles whose opinions I respect would never go down that road.

A personal anecdote, five or so years ago, one of my local dealers hosted a gentleman from Linn at his store on a beautiful autumn Sunday afternoon. Obviously, you know where Linn's opinion lies.

The system this fellow demonstrated for us featured their $20K CD player on one end and a lower end (something in the $1100 - $1500 range, though I've respected their micromonitors that have long slotted below whatever this model was, pricewise) Linn speaker on the other. The Linn amplification used fell somewhere in between those two extremes. He made the usual statement about the source being everything, and to prove it, you could basically use "any old speaker" as a speaker can only reproduce what is passed to it.

The overall goal was to show how divine the result would be in having one follow the Linn philosophy, and spend a disproportionate share of the system budget on the source

Needless to say, the sonic experience of the system was far less ideal than we were being told. Apart from hopefully providing valuable insight into how wrongheaded the Linn approach actually is, I found the entire exercise ridiculous. For the sake of argument, I'll put a $30K price tag on the system, and believe that if I were allowed to divvy that up into 4 $7500 portions, then go around the store and grab a CD player, preamp, power amp, and pair of speakers that individually came in at or less than that $7500, the end result would have walked away from the system that was demonstrated.

My overall point, to quote Kondo-san of Audio Note, "Nothing is unimportant."

The sushi analogy is lame; it's either good or bad.

Not the case with digital sources. Most are good enough for this fellow's application. As I said earlier, there is a plethora of inexpensive digital sources and converters.

I hope that helps.

The sushi analogy isn't lame if you're not too illiterate to understand it. The point is it doesn't matter how good the fish starts out if the trip to your mouth destroys it, just like the signal's trip through your stereo system to your ears. Odd thing is, I think Mr. Feil and I agree more than disagree on the question posed.