Should I upgrade DAC, speaker cables, ICs, or PCs?

Great feedback!

Actually, I'm surprised everybody went for the source as the first step. It's unusual to get an unanimous answer in this hobby. Maybe the question was too obvious, not to me anyway.

Sorry about the typo: the Rotel is a CD player indeed. Don't know why I typed preamp there...

While I haven't been able to try how cables impact the sound, I tend to believe they do. Unfortunately I live overseas in South America so borrowing from the Cable Co is not an option, and there aren't many hi-end cables around here to try, let alone borrowing for in-home audition. So I'm stuck with educated guessing. The best way 've found so far is digging threads here and contacting folks with systems as similar as possible to mine (albeit different tastes) and get their input as to what worked and why/how.

From that I was thinking using the Rotel as transport for the DAC3 (mentioned), or Benchmark (mentioned), or MHDT Havana, to name 3 that come to mind now. I like the idea of computer audio down the road, but as another source as opposed to replacing the CD transport.

For cables I am surprised to get the feedback of PCs first, but this is part of the learning I am after.
For speaker and ICs I had good comments about Kimber 8TC and another model up I can't recall now, Purist Audio, Transparent, or Nordost. I know of two people with B&W speakers who swear by Nordost Frey and Valkyrja speaker cable, but those are close to $1200 used and I have a hard time justifying that for my system.

What I'm taking away then is use $1500 for: a DAC and a digital IC for transport to DAC, and do the rest as funds come up. Example: a DAC3 is listed for $1295+shipping, leaving about $200 for the digital IC.
Later, when funds permit get PCs for the DAC and Rotel transport, and even later ICs and PCs for pre and amp, and finally the speaker cables.

Am I making sense?
Thank you for the very good feedback!

Never upgrade a cable when you can make a legitimate component upgrade.

I've owned the Havana, Benchmark, and DAC3... you can do better for the money.

OK Mintzar, looks like you want to be asked: what are your suggestions for doing better than those components, for the money?

The Zardoz Ultimo Transport starts around $1k and goes up to around $4k depending on the upgrades you want. It's a superb DAC and will also allow you to send music wirelessly from your Mac Mini (cuts off the source, feel free to message me if you don't understand how network transfer works).

The Other option is the Mojo Audio DAC, which I've been somewhat beta testing over the last 6 months. It's better than the Z, but it'll cost right around $2k.

There are other options in the pro-audio realm, the TC Studio Konnect 48 is a stellar piece of gear for $700-1k. If you aren't familiar with routing and using pro-audio I can help with that. But the TC is lower noise than the Mojo Audio and Z. We can get a little more expensive also into the $4k range and skyrocket into the $30k+ performance range.

Of the three units you mentioned the Havana is by far the most musical. The problem is that the tubes are noisy. The Benchmark is VERY bright and analytical. You don't want any oversampling DACs. They destroy the emotional content of the music and give an artificial sense of detail. Oversampling uses an algorithm to correct for information that either isn't there. That algorithm creates jitter, which means timing errors. So you may have a more detailed sound, but you loose the proper time tune and tone of the music.

So I'd recommend going with a good NOS DAC. All of the DACs I mentioned I have owned or had in my system for a good length of time. I currently own the Prism Sound Orpheus.

You can't go wrong with any of the DACs I mentioned. They are all in the top tier of performance.