Congested sound - more power or resolution?

It's not the room and although one component or another may be contributing to this grunge to some extent, you are probably experiencing the results of untreated AC noise and the bi-directional digital noise generated by your cd player.

Digital noise is bi-directional in that the noise it generates goes back into the AC line, even back to the service panel, and in then infiltrates into your other components.

Before you do anything with your equipment, you should investigate proper line conditioning. I say proper because there are plenty of popular line conditioners that do nothing and worse. Furthermore, some to many line conditioners do not have bi-directional filtering capability.

Once you have acquired proper line conditioning, your system is now resting on a solid foundation, eliminating any grunge or digital hash and therefore should be far more pristine and musical. As a result your present and future components will be exhibiting more of their true potential.

Also, keep in mind that some to many ics and scs induce a time smear that will also sound like a grunge or digital hash.

-IMO

Dealing with power is very important. I had horrible congestion on a Krell which was plugged into a surge suppressor power board. When I plugged it straight into the wall with a shielded power cable, it transformed to be light and airy like no other tweak or interconnect has ever done for me in my 25 years listening.

IIRC - I seem to remember reading that power conditioning was not necessarily the best thing. Note that many of the top end systems here on audiogon do not use them. Would a similar effect be gained by using more specialist power cables?

Name specific recordings where you have this problem. It could be that there are problems with the recordings themselves. It's not unheard of for guitar tracks to be recorded clean and distortion/grunge added later via various effects processors and heavy signal compression. This could be what you are hearing.