The Dude is a great preamp. To summarize it in a few words: it sounds more like live music. The guys at TRL are very talented. I like their work a lot.
Thanks for the comment, Studio1. I agree that the preamp can be further improved. A friend brought his highly modified Ming-Da 2A3 preamp to my house and it had a better texture for violin music. I am thinking to tweak the BAT preamp....
Regarding the CD player, it has a tube output section from ModWright.
Speakers, speaker cables, and Interconnect are fine! Preamplifier is nice but could be outperformed by CAT or Dehavilland; and, CD Player may be able to take one more leap with a Perpetual Tech DAC.