How to remove harshness from my digital gear

Rrog, I can certainly understand what you mean, everything's relative. Weird the way we get used to the distortions , eh?

Most of the problem is related to the CD. Stock off the shelf CDs almost always sound harsh, tinny, thin, generic, boomy, grainy, two dimensional, distorted, uninvolving, boring and metallic.

Audioengr wrote,

"Geoff - the CD sounds thin due to jitter from the badly formed pits. Rip the CD with dbpoweramp to .wave file and then rewrite onto a CDROM using a good writer and you will experience lower jitter. Reclock the CD transport and you will experience even lower jitter."

There are many reasons why CDs sound harsh and I think badly formed pits is probably one of them, as the Nespa photon device seemed to illustrate. However, the badly formed pits are not the end of the story, not by a long shot. To name a few other reasons: scattered background laser light, mold release compound on the surface of the CD, out of round condition of the disc produces excessive wobble, transport not level during play, magnetism build up in the CD, static charge build up on the CD surface, structureborne vibration. In addition, there are many other reasons why CDs often sound harsh, thin, etc. that are probably too controversial to mention in this discussion. We'll save those for a rainy day.