BillyB I feel your pain. When you have lived with a system for a long time and like it but you want to take that next step up it gets tricky. I have a 9 year old CDP and I will be replcaing it soon. I am concerned about throwing the system out of balance. Next I will be shopping for speakers. The few times I have not enjoyed listening to my system is when I had the wrong cables for the componets in use. I lean to changing cables to improve the sound. IMO silver plated copper cables and interconnects are bright. I would also work with speaker positioning others recommended. After all that is a free tweak. Check how you have the speakers toed in. Having the tweeters pointing at your listening position could give you too much high frequency. I would hate for you to take a loss if a simple fix will help.