THE Eternal dissatisfied

In all honesty, the best sound I ever heard with your speakers was with the YBA components! You might want to hear some others before changing, you may chase away that upgrade bug!

In my opinion, stick with YBA. Jm Labs speakers sound great with YBA gear... If you want to upgrade, you could get a Passion Amp/Preamp (but much more expensive than you are willing to pay)...

Regards

Well, face it. Your a hobbyist. We hobbiest are never satisfied. There is always the 'bug to tinker' : )

While I don't know your equipment (except that it is very good by reputation) May I suggest some relatively inexpensive tweaks: cabling as suggested is obvious but might cost a bit more than you want to spend. On the other hand you can audition cable (www.fatwyre.com) at little or no cost and evaluate the changes in your system. Sometimes after tryign different cable you find that your system is fine unchanged and the upgrade bug is fed (for a while). Another area to explore: room tweaks. Joh Risch has written a lot about simple inexpensive tube traps which can be fun to make and highly effective. This also feeds the bug. You didn't mention anything about your equipment rack but it's amazing what resonance control of electical components can do for your system. This applies to CD players of course but even amplifiers benefit. This is the nice thing about our hobby; you can spend big or you can spend small and still have fun making audible improvements. So have fun!

The Ayre/Cardas "Irrational But Effacious" system-degaussing CD used on a monthly basis.

Contact cleaning: periodically (at least annually) all cables, connections & jacks including AC interfaces

cabling: upgrade both - your signal cables & AC cords

AC line conditioning

dedicated AC line with a quality AC outlet(s)

Vibration control: cones, footers, shelving, pods

room treatments: including but not limited to furnishings, wall rugs, drapery, specialized diffusers / traps, Room Lenz

I agree with Bob bundus. And That IBE disk really does make a difference. Pretty amazing....

KF