Can good speakers take edge off digital?

Well, don't get me wrong, I love my Quad speakers, but they are rated at 88db, so I thought maybe this is a bit too much for my 18w SET amp to drive. So maybe the edge I am hearing is perhaps distortion? I wanted to try a more efficient speaker, such as the Zu to see if that can help.

Toufu, if you can increase your budget, a used Modwright Sony would be my recommendation. No digital edge and, provided that you shop smartly, you'll be able to resell it for little or no loss.

Wrong strategy!

Best tweak I did for my cd player: brass footers. The mapleshade variety - heavier the better. Completely took the 'glare' off of vocals and certain frequencies.

Toufu,
I own the active version of the Quad 11L. The speaker does many things very well, but there is a definite hot spot in the tweeter output. A hump from 5kHz to 10kHz gives many recordings an edginess that I can't tolerate- particularly with compressed, forward vocals (Lucinda Williams album "West" is a good example).
One thing that really did help, and was measurable improvement, was wool tweeter surround to reduce baffle diffraction.
Next week I'll be in a city where I can listen to more monitors and I am hoping to find the right speaker (maybe Dynaudio) even if I have to move away from active design.
Regards,
Charlie