Tired of boring, polite, laid-back sound.....

I agree with aball. I had several speakers and several amps. The less than average amps, NAD and Rotel(brit design) made some pretty good music through my top line speakers, and very aweful sound through my B&W speakers.
Equally my JOR amp sounded pretty crummy passing through the B&W speaker.
So what i am saying, speakers are MORE than 50% of the setup.
But as phasecorrect points out, you need to consider your system a total intergration package.
I started with the JOR. I knew I wanted tubes, I knew I wanted a Jadis, barely made the purchase at $2100, I'll admit.
Then I moved on to upgradeing speakers, then to cdp.

Audition a subwoofer in your system. Some Velodyne products are making proper intigration with room and system very simple. And remember you can always turn it off.

Here's one out of left field. How about EQ? Yeah, I'm a philistine. But, I've gotta say, adding a Behringer DSP8024 digital EQ between my CD player and preamp has breathed amazing new life into my Martin Logan Aeriuses. It fixed some serious room resonances and suckouts in the bass, smoothed out the slightly warm vocals, and tipped up the Aeriuses' downward-sloping treble just enough to yield flat response up to 16Khz and really make cymbals and hi-hats present without becoming brittle or fatiguing. When I switch out the EQ, I can't believe I lived with such a warm, opaque sound before. Lest anyone jump to conclusions, I'm not a "thump & sizzle" guy. My previous speakers were Spica TC-60s. I let the auto-EQ set flat response, then reduced the midrange and treble corrections by 1db to restore a bit of the Aeriuses' warmth.

My preamp's an Adcom GFP-555, and power is from two GFA-5200s - generally considered "bright". The CD player's a Harman/Kardon 8550 changer, and the Behringer's DAC is certainly no worse. The unit adds absolutely no noise to the system (cranking the preamp all the way up with a CD paused produces no noise or hum at all). And, since EQ happens before the digital signal is converted to analog, there's (Behringer claims) no phase shift either. Maybe I've got a tin ear, but the Aeriuses just sound lots better to me with the EQ. Even imaging seems better focused, probably due to compensation for differing reflectivity on the left and rights sides of my room.

If I had known this would work so well, I'd have gone for a DEQ2496 for another $150 for its reportedly better DAC and higher resolution. But I'm cheap, I didn't know what to expect, and the DSP8024 with mic and AES/EBU digital input was just $150 on eBay. State of the art? Not. A bargain and a joy? Definitely.

hi phasecorrect, could you specify the components you feel are responsible for the type of sound which displeases you ?