Why does it sound less dynamic?

I think Joe and No_money are right on - I recently had to send my Meridian 200 transport in for repairs and substituted a Rotel 855 driving my Meridian DAC and the sound worsened considerably! The soundstage really suffered, much as you have described, just less real - no excitment at all. I lost alot of clarity also which can be related to that immediacy we all like. I had to listen to it this way for 6 weeks and never got used to it - I started watching more TV - bummer!!

Keep in mind that even where you position a cone under the equipment could influence the music coming out of your speakers. Seems that you need to play around with your setup and cabling to (possibly) get back to something closer to your previous "sound". Have you made the changes recently?

The above post should all be heeded, it is likely that there is an equipment mismatch. However, let me suggest another possibility, maybe your system doesn't "excite" because it is truly lower in distortion. In recording studios there are a number of different effect products that essentially add harmonic distortion to the music. As a generic group these products are called exciters. The make the music "hot", if only temporarily; long-term their use is quite irritating. In high end reproduction a similar situation can occur. A detailed, but higher distortion system can sound more interesting than a truly resolving, low distortion setup, at least in a direct comparison. What I'm really getting at is, if your system is evolving towards higher musical resolution, it might not sound more exciting, but instead sound more real.

The timeliness of this discussion is almost scary. Overall my system is at a level with which I am satisfied and it isn't likely to change much in the foreseeable future. Except for one thing. On certain recordings there is a slight sibilance on "S"s, mostly close-miked female vocals. Admittedly, I originally liked the extra "clarity." But it has now become "more detail than I need." Several changes (power cords, ICs, digital cable) masked it, but nothing seemed to actually remove it. That is, until this morning. The first track on Diana Krall's "All For You" (I belive the name is "Errand Girl for Rhythm") exemplfies the problem. Well, while listening to this CD before work the problem seemed to have somehow cleared up. Not completely, but there had definitely been an improvement. Interestingly, I did also perceive less "excitement" as mentioned above. There was enough difference that it caused me to listen, fruitlessly, for changes in dynamics, soundstage, etc. At the time the loss of excitement was attributed to it being BC (before coffee). Upon reading Sol322 and Onhwy61's comments a switch flipped and the light came on. Why would anything have suddenly changed? Oh yeah! There are binders weighing several pounds each sitting on both the transport and DAC where normally there is nothing. This was the only thing different from the normal setup. The loss of "excitement" *was* coupled with the easing of the sibilance. Looks like I've got some experimentation to do with vibration isolation. Thanks for the lead, guys.

To be honest, I am in this Quest or massive revamping mode. I got the SFL-2 on February and the PA-7 around the same time, then came the some cabling change, an Analysis Plus 12 wires