Ia a good amp more important than a good DAC?

Honest1: I have found the system sounds no better than the weakest link.

I agree. The often stated rationale for "source first," that the imperfections of what comes first in the chain cannot be undone by what comes later, makes no sense because it ignores the MAGNITUDE of the imperfections in each link of the chain. Although that is not to say that for SOME listeners and some systems, the choice of source component will necessarily be less important than the choice of what comes later.

The most influential early promulgator of that philosophy, btw, was Ivor Tiefenbrun of Linn, ca. 1980. Of course, it just so happened that his major product was the LP12 turntable.

Freediver: The HIGHLY respected speaker designer Bill Dundleston(I hope thats right)of Legacy Speakers once stated in an interview that the importance of the individual components in a music reproduction system was:Recordings-Speakers-Amplification-Source-Cables.I agree completely.

FWIW, I agree also.

Regards,
-- Al

"rationale"?

Yes, that's correct. "Rational" is also a word, but it has a different meaning.

http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rationale
http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/rational

Mark -- I don't question that for many people "source first" may be the best approach. My contention is that the explanation/justification/rationale that is commonly offered for that approach is flawed.

Best regards,
-- Al

If you feed any amp garbage as the source it will not be able to compensate for those shortcomings. Period. End of story.

Marco, along the lines of my earlier comments, I respectfully disagree with that contention. Yes, garbage in = garbage out. But as Unsound aptly put it, garbage out also = garbage out.

The question is which garbage is worse. And the answer will obviously not be the same for all system configurations and all listeners. But regardless of what the answer may be in any particular case, as I stated earlier it is flawed logic to contend that what is at the beginning of the chain is most important simply by virtue of being at the beginning of the chain. The degree to which each component introduces garbage has to be taken into account, not just its position in the chain.

On another note, happy 2010!

Regards,
-- Al