everything sounded great until the upgrade

If you have changed the balance of your system, you can try to compensate by doing simple things, like experimenting with speaker or listening chair placement, minor acoustic treatment, like putting tapestries on the walls or using an area rug on the floor (things that may not cost much or unduly disrupt your life).  Doing more to compensate, like buying different cables is a gamble because it may not work.  I hope it is something like changing the toe-in of the speakers that will do the trick.

sometimes just getting familiar with the new sound will also change your mind, so be patient and go slow with the changes.

I can understand your not wanting to fully disclose the products involved, but perhaps you can say what were the components that you liked before the change.

I don't have a lot of placement options but I will do my best :)

I don't doubt it's a good amp.

@larryi 

it's all in the comments now, Marantz 2252B --> Musical Fidelity A3.2

Dynaudio Evoke 20

My initial hope was that things would get better not worse, So the improvements you are suggesting (all great ones) are "me working for the amp and not the amp working for me" :) if it makes sense. But I will get up my butt and play with the placement. 

   I   loved the sound of my modest system, until I upgraded my amp. 

It seems you answered your own question - trust your ears and first impressions.

Take it from someone who has gone down the rabbit hole of trying to accommodate the one thing about my system that didn’t sound great to me.  In my case it was a pair of large speakers that many said were great-sounding speakers.  After about 3 years and too much money I finally replaced them - problem solved.  In the end, the simple solution was best.

I once demoed some speakers at someone's home and the CD player was unlistenable.  The highs were just as you described.  Does you CD player have a TOSLink out?  A warmer more analog sounding DAC would make the CDs sound more like the turntable.