Best upgrade for the money ?

I agree with getting rid of the mid fi polks for something more hi end. Sell the Polks & throw in another $700 to get somthing decent (there would be many different speakers to choose from which will walk all over the Polks). The Polks simply don't do justice to the rest of your system ...no offense intended.

Rob: Forget about the power cords for now. They will make a relativily minor improvement $ for $ as compared to speaker replacement. You need to decide on your speakers before considering a DAC or anything else. Everything is system dependent in order to achieve some sort of synergy. You can buy good used speakers starting at the $750 range & approach great at the $1500-$2000 range. As an example...I saw a pair of Totem 1's on audiogon for $750 which will blow out your Polk's, however they are limited in the low end. You also need to be care with the efficiecy of the speaker, as I'm not sure how many WPC your amp puts out. Hope this helps.

I agree, proper speaker placement is critical. If speakers are not properly placed...most notably your imaging, soundstaging & bass performance will suffer greatly. Take the Polks & position them properly...you will experience a large sonic improvement. Now I suggest you sell the Polks plus add another $700 to your profit & buy a pair of high end speakers (I can't suggest a particular speaker because I don't know how much you would get for the Polks, but trust me there are many better than Polk). Then take those speakers & position them properly to realize a HUUUUGE sonic improvement over your previous sound.

Hi Pops...That's some nice gear you have there, but I'm a little bit thrown back by your statments. Your saying the Polks sound as good as the Vandy's just different??? Although the Vandy's have never been the speaker of my choice (a little bit on the warm side for me) I still think they sound pretty good. I certainly feel they do almost everything more right than the Polks could ever hope to. Vandy's strong suit has always been that they are very open sounding & have excellent imaging & soundstaging capabilties. Something the Polks could never come close to. Not to mention the Vandy's are more nuetral sounding than the Polks. You may want to try replacing your cables if your not hearing these differances. I've always found MIT to be some what veiled. My philosophy is to start with really good speakers (put your $'s there) than slowly put the right matching components in front of them to really get them to sing. To start with mid-fi speakers such as Polks & then put high resolution electronics in front them in my opinion seems a waste. Reason being...simply because those speakers will never allow you to realize the full benifits of high resolution electronics. Rob: your getting an awful lot of information here which can be confusing. Simple rule of thumb is as you may well know...the speakers will affect the sound of any system the most, than the source (CD player, Transport/DAC or phono), preamp, amp, speakers wires, interconnects, lastly power cords. In that order. One other component which would make more sonic improvement than any of the wires is the PS Audio power plant as mention in one of these threads.

Gotcha Pops... you could be right on the MIT's. I'm more familiar with the older wire.