Mr. P.

While its true that all players don't sound the same, the gap is narrowing dramatically. Robert Harley was truthful enough to tell readers that they can enjoy world-class playback for $1500-$2000. He has been in audio a long long time. His speakers previously the Maxx2 and now the Alexandria are very revealing, although not to everyones taste. His preamp, the Mark Levinson No326 is quite revealing also. Robert E.Greene knows his stuff, and proclaims that the Benchmark DAC is pretty much as good as it gets. Again I do think some players reach higher levels of refinement, but the difference is not great these days. An exception to this is the dCs gear, they have always been and still are the state of the art in digital reproduction. I believe dCS were the first to develop upsampling. In fact dCS has another business - developing systems for the Military.

Why source first? I think source does make a difference, but the degree of difference is not dramatic like pre/amp and speakers.