You don't need to buy a used preamp... there is new line stage pre-amp from Morrisson that is outstanding and below your budget (Peter Aczel - the Audio Critic bought one after reviewing it since it was the bestr preamp he ever measured and heard). It is called ELAD and is reviewed at audioreview.com. Using a cd direct causes a problem since it does not have the drive at the low input impedance of your amplifiers. This will roll of your frequency extension. In terms of a transport for digital... there is a lot of confusion out there. If you are using a coax cable you will here a large variance between units. A fibre optic (toslink) connection sounds the same across most transports. The reason is again impedance. If you use coax it is impled that your transport cable and dac are all 75 ohms impedance. If any one of them is not, you swill skew your frequency response. This is the source of most "differences" heard in transports. Using the fibre optic connection eliminates most of the differences, extends high frequency repsonse and gives a smoother sound (particularly the highs!). You can use a dvd player as a transport using the toslink digital out. Spend the money you save on a good fibre optic cable. If you can get a quartz one, they sound better than the plastic ones. Hagen
The best used preamp and d/a converter
My system consists of Revel's F-30 performa's and dual classe 100 amps, and a old Rotel Rsp960ax preamp and a denon cd player. I am definetly limited by the last two on that list and want to upgrade these components. I have been told the cp-50 or cp-60 would be a great preamp for my system and the theta IIIa converter with the data basic II transport would make a very nice system. I was just wondering what everyone else's thoughts are on this. Other recommenadtions would be helpfull. I am looking to spend about 1600 on the preamp, 900 d/a, and 450 on the transport. Any info would be appreciated. Thanks