CDP suggestions for bright system?

This isn't what you asked Widener, but I believe that you should banish from your system any component that is either not neutral or is dynamically constrained. So it worries me that you are going to add to your existing "brightness" problem by adding a warm or dull and compressed CD player. In my long trek in this hobby I have often fallen foul of this very predicament - only to realise that tolerating any colored or dynamically constrained component can cause you enormous expense trying to compensate for it. High end sound and components is not just about balancing up colorations to get a neutral result - matching one bright component with one dull one does not result in audio bliss IMHO. Therefore I would urge you to consider going to the greater effort of finding out what is causing the brightness, whether it be room, component or cable, and fix it first. I suspect my suggestion will not be good news, but I believe it will serve you better in the long run.

Hi Doug. I think we agree. A friend of mine once commented on another's audiophilia nervosa as a "misguided wild goose chase for a musical result from CDs". I suspect there is a lot of truth in the suggestion that you are wasting your time trying to get a high end result out of a mid-fi medium like CD. But I am not sure that what is wrong with CDs is brightness, or that adding warmth or compression makes it sound any better. I really don't know about the Denon DCD-620 but the Denons I have heard did not strike me as bright, just lacking resolution and any musical magic. So I think Widener still has a problem with perhaps amp, speakers or room that might be best dealt with first.