everything sounded great until the upgrade

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.

@grislybutter

The book will not frustrate you… it talks a lot on how to assemble a great system on a shoestring budget. Knowledge empowers you and makes you more effective regardless of budget.

the sound of the "new" amp is decent with my turntable, and terrible with my CD player.

My guess would be that's because analog is so much better than digital. It may not be your CD player, but your CDs. Or both.

When I upgraded my speakers, I could no longer listen to CDs, because (I thought) the CD player was not as good as the rest of my components. I could not listen to ANY CDs without cringing. My records sounded even better though.

Then I upgraded my CD player, and sure enough, many of my CDs sounded much better. But the MAJORITY of my CDs still sounded awful, many of them even worse, and those I just ended up giving to Goodwill. Many of these were from the 80s and 90s, when digital recording and mastering (DDD, "all digital") was considered the apotheosis of recorded sound.

The (sequential) upgrades of my amp, speakers, and CD player gave me some wonderful sound, but also limited me in what I can listen to. Crappy recordings and/or masterings just do not cut the mustard any more. I have to be more diligent and discerning in what recorded material I choose to invest in (both digital and analog, but especially digital). It's a bit of a trade-off, but one I'm content to make, because of the wonderful sound I get with the right recordings.