Advice on Budget System for newbie

I did exactly what S7horton suggested, bought a used Audio Refinement complete for $525 and a slightly used Music Hall CD-25 for $350. I recommend both very highly in that price range and they look great together, if that's important to you. I've used them with Soliloquy 5.0's and Proac Response 1s' and was extremely happy with both setups.

Tobias, yes, I forgot to mention that I'd also upgraded the power cord. I made up my own, using Marinco plugs and Belden 19364 wire. I had the cord when I bought the player and never used the stock cord at all so I can't compare the two.

On the opamps, Underwood HiFi uses the Burr Brown OPA-627 in their upgrade and Sound Odyssey uses the AD8066. There was no way to compare the two directly and the reason I bought the 8066 is that the price seemed reasonable considering the cost of the player. Sound Odyssey was set up to sell parts directly from their web site and that's the chip they use. I'm thrilled with the sound but the OPA-627 might be a good option, as well, though considerably more expensive. They sell it as well

Here's the page on their site with descriptions of the various opamps they sell. I'm sure their may be other sources, as well.
http://store.yahoo.com/yhst-9053161298275/opamps.html

I know this thread is sounding like an ad for the CD-25 but I did want to chime in one more time to reinforce what Tobias is saying. My experience is that, with a limited budget, a dollar spent on the source gets you more improvement than a dollar spent on the amp, cable or speakers. It's not that the others aren't important and you certainly have to find a balance, both sonically and financially, among all of them.

One of the advantages of the CD-25 is that, while it's an exceptional player at its price in stock form, it's easy to make it much better with commonly available ugrades. Spending $50 on a pair of better op-amps that you can easily install yourself takes it to another level of quality entirely. I haven't found any upgrade to the other components that will even come close to matching the improvement for anything like that amount of money.

Again, from my experience in swapping out a lot of moderately-priced components, If you had $800 to spend on a source and amp you'd be much, much better off with, for example, a $600 CD-25 and a $200 entry-level used Rotel integrated amp than with a $600 integrated of any brand and a $200 player.

Cable differences are important but more subtle. It's easy to start with any of the moderately prices ones like Audioquest or DH Labs and experiment as you go.

Maxxc

I'm afraid I don't have the same level of experience with high-end components, though my current set-up replaced a much more expensive system of all McCormack electronics, including an SST transport and separate DAC as a source.

As Tobias said, at the high end the compromises you make just don't have as much impact. You should be able to simply tune the system to your preferences by choosing different components rather than spend time and money trying to avoid what irritates you.

I expect the same principles apply, you're just making much smaller incremental changes as you spend much larger sums of money. It argues even more strongly for really taking your time and auditioning equipment in your own system, comparing it carefully with what you already have before you make a decision.

I can't comment on whether any of the various upgrades are cost effective from the several places who do them. It looked to me as if the biggest bang for the buck might be in replacing the opamps since they're such a critical piece in the signal path and there's such a huge spread in the price ratio between the relatively inexpensive ones in the stock player and the high end ones. Many of the other upgrades require soldering, as well, but replacing the opamps doesn't.

I bought a pair of AD8066 opamps from soundodyssey.com for $54 and the swap was no more difficult than replacing a fuse, as long as you pay attention to the pin orientation. The difference in sound is amazing, particular in bass articulation. Blindfolded, I would have thought I was listening to a more expensive pair of speakers rather than to an upgrade of a couple of fingernail-sized chips.