the weakest link may very well be the 565. try and find a good used tube pre and youll be amazxed.. the arc 2p3a1 i got for low$ opened up the dynamics and air that i thought was limithed by my 555II. tkubes in the front,ss in the amp are a very fine way to go. my friend uses counterpoint sa2000/adcom 5800 driving ml requests to wonderful effect. the adcom amp naysayers are full of crap. they arent bright.
What is the weakest link in my C system
Looking for a sound advice on the tweaks in my "budget" system, which I'm pretty satisfied with, but the quest is always to make the sound a little better. CD player: Cal Audio DX-1, analog out via Straightwire LSI Encore to Adcom GFP 565 preamp; bypass out to Rotel RB-980BX via Straightwire LaserLink and normal out to NHT SA-2 via Radioshack gold; and then Kimber 4TC from the Rotel to NHT Super Zeros and BIG copper caples from SA-2 to NHT SW2. I am in the process of finding/making High Pass filter in the signal between Pre- and Power-amp to improve the headroom of the Super Zeros (any advise on that would be great!) So what cables do should I replace (never mind the Radio Shack, thats temporary) , and with what at reasonable prices? (I'm still in Graduate School). Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.