New Amp Questions

Hey everyone,

Just purchased a new Amp yesterday a Yamaha RN 602. This was an upgrade to my old NAD 7140.

I'm running Elac Debut 2.0 6.2 bookshelves.

Other then the new Yamaha the system is exactly the same, with a cd player and a turntable.

I sit about 10 feet from speakers & haven't changed the placement.

Hooked it all up last night and noticed something unexpected. When I play a CD it didn't sound as good as the NAD. The NAD only has RCA inputs. I tried both RCA and Digital Coax into the Yamaha, but neither had that wow factor I had with the NAD (playing the same CD's). I also noticed the imaging wasn't as nice as the NAD and the Yamaha sounded a bit brighter.

I also noticed I need to crank the Yamaha to about -10 to match the volume of the NAD at about 25% volume.

Tried using the pure direct mode on the Yamaha as well & no change.

Then I tried playing Tidal (FLAC 44.1) through the network connect (via Tidal). This sounded exceptionally better than the CD.  I actually played the same songs, switching back and forth between the CD digital connection, CD RCA connection, than to Tidal (via the network). The network sounded better on each track, and the volume was louder as well.

Any ideas here?

When I purchased the system my fear was that the network would not live up to expectations but I fully expected CD's to sound the same (if not better).

Note: I also played some records through the phono stage of the Yamaha and they sound very similar to the phono stage on the NAD (just less power/volume through the Yamaha).

Any ideas why the CD's sound worse? Could it be I need to fiddle with the speaker placement with the new amp?

Thanks, everyone!