Theil/Classe 6, and listener fatigue

You may also want to try and change the angle of your speakers. If they are toed in, try moving them to aim more straight ahead.

Kadlec, You didn't mention any acoustic room treatments...if you have a lively room, you might want to treat the 4 upper corners, the side walls the center of the front wall, and the center of the back wall with some acoustic treatments. You can make these yourself from 2" foam and cover them with any cloth that works with your decor. Use hot glue and Velcro to stick them up. (Look at Michael Green Room Tunes for placement and sizes.) Then you can play with speaker cables and interconnects. I'm not fond of the B&K amps, they tend to be boring, 2-dimensional, and lifeless. I've heard the Theils MCS1's with Classe cd, amp and preamp and also thought they were a little too bright. But try the room treatments first, then the cables, and then you can start swapping amps or cd players.

I disagree with joe_coherant. I find the entire Theil line to very much on the fatiguing side. Way to edgy for my tastes in the highs. I would recommend going to a tube amp and/or preamp to tone down the sizzle of the solid state gear. Good luck, I can imagine what you are going through.

I believe there is nothing worse than trying to "tone-down" the Thiels with some "colorful" tube gear. That will simply spoil the Thiel's crispness and other strong points unless you spend thousands and thousands of dollars in a super tube amp. There are a number of appropriate ss amps that work fine with Thiels, including Classe, Levinson, and also Marsh Sound Designs. Alas, it could be that you are simply in the camp which believes the Thiels are bright and if that's the case nothing will really change your mind, in my experience. If so, my best advice would be to sell the Thiels and get something else. Although perhaps before doing so you may want to go to a couple of live music events to make sure what you are hearing is not the way real life sounds.

The Rotel, I have one as a backup and recently replaced a Meridian transport with it while the Meridian was being fixed and my warm system - CJ pre, Classe amp, and Mit cables got considerably brighter. MIT or Cardas and a new CD source will difinetly help.