Whats my weak link?

It just might be his listening room .You could be spinning your wheels by replacing gear.Have him bring his gear over to your house and then you can determine what you need.

B_Limo,

Just asking, what are you doing?

On March 1 you buy Vandys. Four days later you buy KEFs.

So what are you doing? More importantly, where do you want to go and how much money do you have available to try to get there?

Honestly, it sounds like you don't know, but what you do know is when you hear something better, you want that sound.

Tmsorosk told you that the synergy of the components is the thing that makes or breaks a system. You assumed that the KEFs were the winning factor in your friend's system, but they didn't do that same trick in your system, so it's not just the KEFs alone that gave your friend his sound.

Do you have a dealer nearby who can help you? It appears that you're flying blind and all you're going to do is keep on spending money with no plan in place.

Chuck

YOur room probably has different acoustics than the other guys. Have you played with speaker placement and orientation to get them locked into your room? Gotta do that first to get a good baseline from which to judge what aspect of the sound, if any, needs to improve and how best to achieve that.

Dont know why people recommend changing powercords when you havent even stated what you already have. You say " upgraded", thats a good start. Since you've asked for opinions, I would start by replacing that old pre/pro and try a tube pre.

Hi B,

I have three comments:

1)I second Mapman's comment about room acoustics, speaker placement, and speaker orientation. Yogiboy's suggestion of having the other person bring over his gear is also a good one, if it can be arranged.

2)It appears that you have the power amp placed directly on top of the preamp, and that both components are right next to the digital stuff. That raises concerns in my mind that RFI/EMI/interference might be radiating between the components, with unpredictable but very conceivably audible sonic consequences. As an experiment, I would suggest that you temporarily move all of the components as far apart from each other as is practical.

3)Given that your DAC includes a headphone amp, you might find it useful to purchase a pair of relatively inexpensive headphones. That would help you to isolate the sonic issues you are perceiving between the source components and source material on the one hand, and the downstream components, speakers, and room acoustics on the other hand. The $100 Sony MDR-7506 provides surprisingly good performance considering its low price.

Regards,
-- Al