can a new amp amp tame my speakers?

English 210, in your shoes, I would go read reviews on your amp and speakers. When there is a great review, note what interconnects and speaker wires they used.
There is a diminishing return on cost/fidelity. Set your budget and stick to it. For our system, I put our finest Tara interconnects in the vinyl setup.
Our second tier still sound mighty fine for DVDs and CDs.
A shoot out in my kids' system gave the MITs interconnects an edge over Silnotes for linearity, and extension. He has a cary tube amp and a sony bluray player. Silnotes will close down the top a bit, which might be just what you want. I bought mid-tier Silnotes when he offers them on super sale on the Gon($100-200 each). His highest stuff is crazy good but prices are wayyyy up there. A matter of system matching.
I searched eBay and Gon for MIT interconnects used. Bought m1s for about $600 a pair. A steal for $1800 interconnects. I was going fir synergy with the speaker wire which i already had. Someday, i will step up to Tara speaker wires.
In your research, find what works with your amp and speakers, then buy them on the cheap. Or buy a generation or two back, if you dont mind not having the latest/greatest. Patience served me well. If you get the Oppo, you will need several prs of analog interconnects, if you are a purist, for sacds.
If you are using the 16 gauge monsters on your front speakers,start changing there!! You might get rid of the glare with a decent set of speaker wires.

Happy shopping.

good idea on the reviews, but not useful in my case with 25 year old speakers...unless I go with the 'house sound' theory. Whatever wires they used then are long since discontinued. For the AVR to amp interconnects that should be doable.
I do get the diminishing returns bit. $600 for a pair of ic's makes me swallow hard, but I get your point. Guess I better keep working to pay for all this, huh?
Thanks

English, set your budget and stick with it. If $200 is your IC limit, there are great used ICs out there worth several times that that will make your system sing.
I get your point with the older speakers. But read up on the amp. You may find some synergy info from the pros out there. Ask the guy you bought your amp from what ICs and speaker wires he used. Find out what speakers/wires other Gon-ers use w their identical amps.
Read up on ribbon tweeters and what ICs pros or Gon-ers used with them.
By the time you do all that research, you will have saved for some great wires. Haha!
Call your speaker manufacturer and ask what brand of wires they recommend.
Ask your Hifi guy to demo some wires in your price range. Do not stretch above your price limit because you won't want to let them go! Haha!
I did that with AQ and found I definitely did not like silver with my Yamaha amp. Great extension, but too hot.
I REALLY like MITs interconnects with my OPpo 95.

When I jumped into MITs, I bought a spool of their 4-conductor wire used in high end home theater installations. My future son in law terminated them. I still use them for my rears in my audiophile setup, and they sound great. Even that wire beat $200 monster speaker cables for linearity, extension and neutrality. Monster bloats the mids and sounds "warmer", but I had to turn my knobs down because so much more info was coming from the bass and the highs!!
Once my ear adjusted to a more neutral sound, I knew I was on the right track. Like I said, I found some decent older MITs and picked them up for my fronts and center when I found crazy good deals, and replaced the installation wires. My $200 monsters went into my home theater and I retired the monster 16 gauge wire from the fronts and center speakers there.
If you buy a name brand like kimbers, MITs, nordost, AQ, and stick around the $200 range for used interconnects, you can easily resell anything that doesn't work for you!

@ english210,, If you ever want to know about Taralabs, let me know,I have bought there cables since they have been in bussiness!, I now have cost no object top of the line cables by them!,they are among the few as best available! cheers!

Audiolabyrinth,
I agree that Tara's are the best!
They opened up the vinyl playback, and the more I layered them, the better the sound got.
We have Tara lab the 2 and 0.8 in set up for IC and phono wires.
Someday--Tara lab speaker wires.
We spent our big money on vinyl playback.
It is music therapy for my husband who is in pain every day. It relaxes him like crazy to listen to vinyl.
I was cautioned that Tara's are so revealing that you don't want them if you haven't already optimized your hardware because they will reveal weaknesses in the system and set up that you may not like hearing! Haha!
In reality,for us with the mufi kw 500 and the arc ph3se, the vinyl sounds so great, it is hard to quit once we start for the evening. We have had way too many 3ams! Our TT is a clearaudio Revolution with strad cart.
But our Hifi gurus tell me there are more neutral amps than mufi out there.
And our speakers get us maybe 90% of the $25k speakers we have heard at shows. There is always another level! Haha!
I hope our friend finds his audio nirvana with some good wires and settles in for music fun soon!
Deb