[geekwithfamily]

I've just been re-reading all my Audio Perfectionist Journals and the author, Richard Hardesty, had this comment on system building: [paraphrasing] "You must have great loudspeakers to hear differences between power amps, great amps to hear differences between preamps and processors, and great preamps to hear differences between sources, great sources let you hear the differences between recordings."

So he's suggesting you build your system from the loudspeaker back (though every section is important). But what if you've made a comprimise along the way.

I don't have a dedicated CD player or DAC. My weakest link is my Pioneer DV-47ai Universal player. I bought it when it looked like SACDs and DVD-As still had a chance (now I can't even sell the coasters and the cases are a funny shape so I have to store them separately). I wish I could upgrade to an Arcam or Ayre CD player. I have enjoyed using an Apple Airport Express as a digital transport, but I have to feed it to my AV receiver's DAC, not as nice as say a Benchmark DAC1.

What breaks your system chain? What's your weakest link? What would you love to replace that could free the rest of your components?