well I appreciate the comment I think kind of I figured it out, and it has to do with Bass. so I've been powering my setup with a arcam alpha 5 which has about 40 Watts and of course the rega has about double that. so last night after I kind of posted this I had the thought that maybe the bass is overpowering the mid-range and obscuring the vocals as I described. anyway I took some socks and stuffed them in the ports and lo and behold that basically eliminated the problem.
I think originally I remember the amplifier 4 years ago differently because well one, auditory memory isn't all that great and number two the older tangent 40 speakers I was using are a sealed box design and they do not have any bass ports. so with those speakers I had them shoved up against the living room wall just for space saving but it didn't really matter because they didn't have any ports anyway.
actually that kind of makes me think some of the best speaker designs that I've heard have been sealed box designs without ports.
so yeah the sound still isn't 100% what I remember but it's basically there and I know some people don't believe in burn in but I do and it's something I've seen time and time again with a lot of different products.
thanks again for your help Bud I appreciate the advice and I'll try leaving it on, I've heard people with rega amps talk about leaving them on all the time and getting a better sound, so I'll give it a try. I mean as you can imagine with the fire and all I'm kind of a little nervous about leaving electronics running.