New DAC or New Speakers?

@lanx0003 From lots of head-fi discussions based around the LHY UIP, my 2 DDC's supposedly sit above the Gaia and up there with the Phoenix. Can’t know for sure without testing but I believe it. Lots of Head-fi peeps are running DDCs in serial. 

@audioman58 Up to 20K total. But I want to go all in on either the speakers or DAC. 

@gkelly You're actually not far off 

@jacupmakeup  Thank you.  Learn something new every day.

@jacupmakeup if you choose the new DAC, I will be very interested to hear what you choose and how happy you are with it over the Aero.  

I got an Aero a few months ago and I thought, even with the stock tubes, it sounded amazing with my Aurender n200, JRDG 625 S2 & Corus feeding DALI Epicon 6s.  I swapped in some TungSol NOS tubes (not the crazy expensive oval plates, just nice regular black plates) and the sound got even better, a touch more detailed and more musical, but really only a little I think. (I like it so much, I just ordered another one for a 2d system where it will go with a CODA CSiB V2, a Innuos PulseMini (for now) and a pair of Revel 226Bes, and i liked LTA so much i order one of their LPS+s for the PulseMini.)

As to your question, FWIW, I am of the old school that thinks speaker improvements are always the place to start if the rest of your gear is already at a pretty high level, as it seems yours is.

(I am assuming you’ve done some tube rolling on the Aero already with yours? If not, that’s a relatively modest cost option to help you see if you still want a different DAC.)