Help, my system sounds lifeless!

I see so many people here pointing to room treatments. I will -partially- agree. The room that he has is not really that great. I can see a couple of problems. The right side of the room is open, which is good, but the left side has these cabinets very close to the speaker. This will cause the left speaker to "blare" some because the mids/highs will plane/reflect off of the cabinets some. Also, that soffit built into the ceiling on the top/left edge of the wall may cause some problems with brightness. Bass response can be an issue with room nodes where some sound absorption panels can help. However, I personally feel that broadband sound absorption is really not that good. In my experience, it really sucks the life out of the music. It really reduces the high frequency excitement.

One thing I noticed is that you have a LOT of silver in your system (Wireworld Platinum Eclipse & Audio Art SC-5). Silver has a higher conductivity than copper and will charge/discharge much faster. In practical terms and in my experience, this means that waveforms will tend be translated to be much faster than normal. There will be a natural push in the mids/highs and I have found that silver will lack bass/midbass body and punch.

Adding silver can help a very slow/warm system (such as tubes), but your system is the complete opposite of tubes. The Simaudio CD player has been said to be very clean/clear and solid state - opposite of something like a Jolida tube CD player. The Belles Soloist Integrated has a fully discrete input stage and is probably a very strong power supply/circuit. I have also found that silver will be so fast and clean that it give a somewhat "artificial" sound. The music and vocals will not sound natural or real. (I recently even found that just adding a silver-plated fuse holder will impart this clean/artificial signature). All of this together (system synergy) may be causing your "lifeless" type of sound.

You said that you like your turntable sound just a bit better. This source will present a warmer/slow type of sound than your extra-clean CD source. I would like you to try a very cheap experiment. Go out and get some 12awg Oxygen Free (OFC) stranded copper speaker wire. You can get this anywhere, BestBuy, whatever (Monoprice sells a 50 foot spool for $16). Just make sure it’s OFC and stranded copper. (do not use the BlueJeans Beldon 10/12awg cable - it is inferior to normal OFC stranded). You can easily bi-wire just by doing a double run. Burn it in for 24 hours and then listen to it. My guess is that it’s going to sound more natural/fuller with more bass. If this experiment succeeds and you like this, maybe try a copper-only interconnect (such as the Wireworld Eclipse -- no silver wire, only pure copper). The Wireworld Eclipse will only cost you $375 new for a half-meter.

Once you complete these really cheap experiments, you can look at different speaker wire.  Or you can look at room treatment if you feel. Or even think about different speakers.