Although a good pre amp would be nice, the biggest improvement for your $1500 budget would be to buy one of the many excellent dacs for $1000 or less, such as EVS Millenium, Birdland Odeon Lite, Bel Canto Dac1 (used), or even modified MSB Link Dac. One of these dacs is far superior to any Rotel CDP dac. Preamp cannot "improve" the signal it is fed, the quality and design of your dac to accurately read and remove distortion from the digital signal is what makes the best CDPs sound more natural, this is where you should concentrate, Sam
