Mark:
Who cares what others think is "the next step up"? I have NAD gear that I auditioned one on one with various other "better" gear, as well as against typical consumer stuff. I bought the NAD because I could hear a significant improvement over the consumer gear, but not a significant difference between it and the other "better" names I could afford. What you might want to do is figure out what you want to spend, then go listen to whatever is in that price bracket. Go a little higher, go a little lower. Some lower price gear will really surprise you. I absolutely love my Creek OBH-12se passive pre ($225 used); and KNOW that it's as good (actually, better) than several units 3+ times it's price. It's never the name, it's always the sound you want. Of all the houseguests I've had, none ever asked about my gear, only about the music playing. I take that to mean the gear is doing the job quite nicely!
Another anecdotal observation: I've seen several threads lately about audio savvy folks using consumer grade cd players (even those 200 cd changers) as transports, feeding it into modestly priced DACs (ie. MSB Link III with upsampling), and getting great sound. Some of these people have highly respectable amplification and speaker gear, yet swear by this digital front end. That tells me it's not who you buy but how it sounds.
chas
Who cares what others think is "the next step up"? I have NAD gear that I auditioned one on one with various other "better" gear, as well as against typical consumer stuff. I bought the NAD because I could hear a significant improvement over the consumer gear, but not a significant difference between it and the other "better" names I could afford. What you might want to do is figure out what you want to spend, then go listen to whatever is in that price bracket. Go a little higher, go a little lower. Some lower price gear will really surprise you. I absolutely love my Creek OBH-12se passive pre ($225 used); and KNOW that it's as good (actually, better) than several units 3+ times it's price. It's never the name, it's always the sound you want. Of all the houseguests I've had, none ever asked about my gear, only about the music playing. I take that to mean the gear is doing the job quite nicely!
Another anecdotal observation: I've seen several threads lately about audio savvy folks using consumer grade cd players (even those 200 cd changers) as transports, feeding it into modestly priced DACs (ie. MSB Link III with upsampling), and getting great sound. Some of these people have highly respectable amplification and speaker gear, yet swear by this digital front end. That tells me it's not who you buy but how it sounds.
chas