everything sounded great until the upgrade

Ok I read it. Music Fidelity. Great Amps. Just musically Bright so if your speakers are bright then bright on bright. The dealer I visited steered me away from MF because of my speakers being bright. Like titanium  drivers are bright. That's what I have is Aluminum mids and titanium tweeters  My speakers have infinite adust on both high frequency drivers.  I can compensate a bit.  If yours do not have mid and tweeter controls you may be stuck. I am sorry this happened.

Ok free things or close to it. Anything except tubes should be left on including your cd player many pieces sound better after a week or more of warm up. Everything equals out. Some very high end has a standby which keeps much of the piece at it best sounding level. Second clean all the connections with Rubbing alcohol get the high percentage bottle. This includes the plug ends of the equipment cords. Lol don't touch the recepticals. Clean the speaker cables the interconnects all that will help. Many times as a system gets more resolution the placement issue comes up so great for people to talk about that bet what do you do? Well the first thing to do is make sure everything is right the way you have it. Are the speakers at exactly the same hieght and level? Take a decent quality level and make sure that they are level side to side and front to back. She across the two speakers and make sure they are the same height. When you look across the one drop your eye down so you can see across the top and that lines up with the other one that the second speaker is no low so you see over top of it or high so you look at the side of it. Also get your tape measure out. Run the tape measure across the speakers and use it as a straight edge if you run it across and line the measure up with the inside corners of the speakers are the outside corners the same distance from the tape measure  meaning is the toe in exact. Also measure the distance from the side wall and the back wall make sure these are exactly the same. As you move these you will have to make sure that you are rechecking level etc. Guaranteed you will hear a huge difference by making everything exactly the same. First thing is you will not understand how muddy your system is until that is correct. Secondly the tonal balance will change. Thirdly that has to be done before you set your listening chair. Also another free thing to try get the setup first but is the cord on you cd player setup so it can only go into the plug in one direction or can you flip it and put it into the receptical the other way. If you can flip it both spades the same width try that it will sound different one way is right the other wrong. What is your cd player sitting on? You might be listening to that as well. An easy thing is to get three dice out of a board game you have and place them under the cd player two at the front and one at.the back you will hear a difference it is a good thing to start with and then experiment with dense pieces of hard wood. 1.inch cubes is a good thing. Make sure they are place in the same place from the front and the sides not under the feet. Look at your wires do the power cords run parallel to the interconnect s or do the cross them at a ninety? Set them up so they cross at a ninety. So you have the speaker wires laying on the floor? If so a free thing to try is cut out the egg carton bumps and use those as stands to get the wire off the floor if you like that try for something better. There again woof blocks or better yet make be out of two pieces of wood so the wire sits on the point of the wood and the base has some width so it is sturdy. Make enough of them so the speaker wire runs parallel to the floor not so there is a wave in the speaker wire. Same thing for the interconnects you can get them off the floor as well if they get there. You can try the little blocks under the amp as well if you want by getting a second set or making a second set. Under the speaker wire I have my transparent wire sitting on power pole insulators. That works great if you have a bunch sitting around. For some reason many antique stores have them around here. Lol had a box of them for some reason sitting in the farm shop I used when I tripped across them one day. As for wall treatment you will want to sit in your chair and have someone gold a mirror on the side wall and move it along until you can see the tweeter in the center of the mirror. Make a small mark on the wall there do that on both sides you can find the second reflection point if you do the same thing and watch as you are I the chair for when you see the tweeter of the left speaker when on the right wall same thing make a small make there as well.  You can do the same thing behind the speakers if you set a pen on top of the speaker in the center pointing back watch for the pen and you can see where the reflection point is behind the speakers on each one. Now the easy way and cheap way to try something here is use some painters tape some you don't mess up the wall and tap a towel hanging off the side walls at the first reflection points. If you like that find something better just a way to try it for cheap. Have fun doing all this for the next couple of months. Use you ears!! And decide for yourself.  You get placement right and you will wipe the floor with way more expensive systems. And remember the more resolution you buy the better the place needs to be. When it is done right you should be able to feel like you can get up from your chair and shake Elvis Presley hand after he had sung to you.  

Regards

OP,

read your problem and skimmed the responses.

Early in my pursuit of high end audio I had a few mis-steps. Assembling a great system takes patience and effort… especially on a budget. If this is something you plan on pursuing (with effort it can be really rewarding) I recommend buying Robert Harley’s book, The Complete Guide to High End Audio. It lays out the whole landscape. One of the difficulties here is you get advice from all sorts of perspectives from folks with vastly different experience and objectives. The book offers approach’s to assemble a very high end system for little money as well as a plan for future better systems.

My thought about your dilemma. I would assume the new integrated is a good sounding piece of equipment and therefore not the problem. Definitely let it break in. Breaking in reduces the treble / forwadness and solidifies bass. The most likely source of the problem is your source. I saw recommendations for a DAC. Good idea… I would look at Schiit Gungnir (or thinking longer termed a Yggdrasil)… probably in you price range. A good streamer makes a difference as well. But this my be longer term… think Bluesound or better.

If the DAC doesn’t do it… then save up for speakers. But the DAC is likely to give you more detail and more natural sound… so this is likely to make you very happy now.

Consider putting some photos of your current system and space under systems under your user ID. I have mine there. This helps folks help you. I mean your system could be in front of picture windows… if we saw that, the whole direction of the conversations would changed

@retiredfarmer 

Hi, thank you for all this, you should write a book about how to gradually improve a system. Some of these changes seem easy, like lifting cables/dice under cd player. 

I will try those. 

If you saw where they sit now, you'd scream! I don't have speaker stands. (partly because they cost money and I also haven't found anything I like aside from the Bucrhardts.

Otherwise, here is my dilemma: if I make these changes - will I hear the difference? Sometimes I switch from amp A to B, speakers X to Y and my ears tell me: well I don't anymore, These are noises. Lots of them. What do you expect from me. 

Of course what I expect is that special moment, when the noise becomes sound, gets into my ears and fills me with joy. 

But it (and all the suggestions) gets to me and enlightens me and will push me to improving my system, eventually :)

@ghdprentice 

1. Book: I wouldn't understand it. Not only that, it would frustrate me that I don't. It would also frustrate me that I don't have the budget to do more (more that costs $) I like technology but more than that I love the awesome and beautiful sound. I don't t really care about how the signals get to my speakers. Not in any disrespectful way, just I am not a nerd that way.

2. DAC Definitely! I am borrowing my brother's a test it out first. 

3. New speakers. I don't have any desire to buy different speakers. I love the look and the sound. Of course if I won the lottery and saved all the orphans from Ukraine and had anything less, I would want the Martens.

4. I will do the photos. I will embarrass myself using West End cubes for speaker stands but. That's where they are.