@traubr , I went through two years of major annoyance switching components to get rid of brightness/harshness, then on a lark, I replaced my 30 year-old power conditioner and mish mash of power cords with modern stuff (Kubala-Sosna in my case.)
I realized it had never been my components at all, just dirty power. I can put a cheap 25 year old Sony receiver in my system now and it sounds sweet and musical.
Get off the component change train. It never ends because components usually are not the problem, IMHO.