What should I upgrade next?

I would trash the whole thing and start over :) But since you can not do that and you get even more lost with all the opinions here, then flip a coin and then commit to one thing.

It has been my personal experience that the source will make the biggest difference, remember the theory " garbage in garbage out "

I disagree with those who recommend better speakers first. I have heard a $350 pair of JBL's sound really good hooked up to a $7000 system. And not heard that much of a difference when the system was hooked up to speakers costing 5 times as much.

good luck!!!!!!!!!!!!

Sorry but I still disagree with you " speaker first " people. Since I am a experienced technician employed by the largest broadband company in the world. I can accurately tell you that " garbage in is definitely going to give you garbage out " It is quite obvious if you use the cable television signal as an analogy to the signal your speakers will get. If we receive a poor signal from our satellite, when then feed that poor signal into our head end equipment, them our head end needs to do more work to process and amplify a already poor signal. Then it is sent out to our fiber nodes, which sends it to our amplifiers. The poorer the signal the more work our amplifiers need to do, to give the appropriate amount of signal, which then travels to the customers tap. Which then goes through a splitter, and eventually ends up at the customers TV. I should also add that as signal travels it degrades, and loses strength. Hence the need of our amplifiers, and yours in your system for that matter.

Now, think of the cd or LP as the satellite sending the signal. Think of the head end as your source cdp or turntable. The preamp as your fiber node, the amp as our cable amplifiers and so on. If your following me then you know the end result of my analogy, your TV ( in my analogy ) is the same as your speakers in your stereo systems. If my cable signal at my TV sucks, it is not going to do me any good to go out and by a high end digital TV and expect my picture to improve drastically. In fact my new TV will only show me how bad my signal really is. So tell me, how is it possible to upgrade your speakers and expect a noticeable improvement in you system? If the rest of the system is garbage, you will only hear your garbage better.

I rest my case.............

ho hum.............. I'm getting bored. I bought my speakers last in my system, and it sounds wonderful!