advice on brightness

...tryin' to think of something other than applying to your system Valhalla speaker wires and interconnects or something mega-uga.

Firstly, I'd try to unterminate your speaker wires and use a bare-wire connection to your speakers and to the amplifier if possible; bananas in general do not provide the tight contact and only expencive locking ones are OK to combine a contact quality with convenience of plugging them on and off. Clean wires off once per week or two with 99% alcohol or any you'd find professional cleaning fluid.

Spray the volume control of your amp with anti-oxide fluid or replace it with DIY stepped one(piece of cake actually) from www.marchand.com

Increase the angle of radiation of your speakers by placing something under: halfs of tennis or ping pong balls, hockey pucks.

Tweak your CD-player with the sam budget tweaks such as pieces of hockey pucks, halfs of tennis balls...

Summarizing this discussion I want to point out that wires being currently used do not bring an extra brightness and considered to be worm and great sounding for the budget.

Audo Refinement components are less likely to bright eather along with the speakers.

HK components do tend to sound bright as any of the poor quality transport.

If you somehow can stretch to $250 over $150 existing you can get Marantz CD67se used