Limited budget-spend more money on amp or preamp?

Muzikat...Correction. Speakers produce a lot more than what is fed to them. They (like all transducers)superimpose their character on the sound.

Source quality-per-dollar goes up a lot faster than speaker quality-per-dollar. And if you consider the CD, DVD, SACD or LP as part of the "source" it's contribution is much greater than the hardware used to play it. Buy a $1,000 player, and $30-$50 recordings.

I'll take $5,000 speakers and a $100 cd player any day over a $5,000 cd player and a $100 pair of speakers.

I agree with Driver and Warren. You would do very well IMO for not a lot of money with either of these two suggestions.

Dave

Suggest you may want to consider the total amp-preamp package as
1) total dollars - looks to be around $1,300
2) length you intend to keep the pieces.
If you expect to keep both for awhile, the integrated makes sense. If you expect to upgrade again soon, then buy seperates. Depending on what component you'll keep longer, spend more on that one.
Preamps - The Adcom is OK, but there's a number of others to consider that I'm sure will come up.
Amps - The Bryston will go $1,000-$1,200. Had a few. They're good value. Consider others like Anthem, Rotel too. Less $ but good.
Good Luck.

Hi Dawgcatching
as you state you are looking at a line stage are we to assume you are not intending to use a turntable,if so and if your cd player or other source component has sufficient gain you could use a passive volume control,some realy reasonably priced passives have shown up recently on audiogon leaving you free to pick your power amp of choice.if you only have one source you could always fit an inboard pair of attenuaters in that source box if there is room or outboard[not so elegant].It is always best to buy components you would wish to use for a long time,regardless of their place in the audio chain.crap is crap and will be audible no matter where you choose to install it.

Notice how many different answers you got...? This seems to garner opinions that are all over the map. I will say that I hung onto a pair of speakers for a long time with numerous equipment changes and they simply kept sounding better all along the way. Until recently I was not feeling compelled to even bother with making a speaker change. Even then, it was a somewhat impulsive mood that spurred my decision to pick up a new pair of speakers. If your speakers are decent (as I believe they are) I think you will notice the benefits of upgrading gear. That aside, I should note that speaker changes do tend to offer the potential for a dramatic sonic change, though not always for the better. I would definitely opt for a nice integrated amp if I was in your shoes. The YBA would probably be a good call and I think that Primare integrated amps are some of the best buys on the used marketplace, having had first hand experience with their A20 amplifier. My personal fave, however, is the Densen B100. Plenty of other great choices too. If you don't do an integrated, I'd probably second the recommendation for a passive (something like the FT Audio 'Little Wonder') matched up with a nice amp until you're able to put more bucks into a pre-amp. The Densen B-100 has a passive pre-amp section and I was using it as a passive pre- for some time. I ended up preferring this sound over several active pre-amps that I tried. Granted, I was using it with a Densen amplifier that was intended to match up with this configuration, but it was somewhat illuminating to make these comparisons.