Intro and question

Hello all
My name is Joe. 58 y/o. Bought some nice gear once upon a time. Still have the Mirage M1 speakers, Counterpoint SA1000 preamp, Perreaux PMF2150B amp, Heybrook TT turntable with Souther linear tonearm and Sumiko Oyster Blue Point Special MC cartridge. It's all pretty old, obviously. It has all sat nearly unused for decades as my old home office was too cluttered to bother with it. A room in my house (den i the basement) became available and my office, starting with my desk and computer moved down here, followed last weekend by my stereo. I'm pleased to report the speakers survived (I was concerned the surrounds might have disintegrated or crossover caps expired in the decades since I bought them) and the system sound pretty good even with the inexpensive Teac CD player as a source. I was really pumped to listen to some LPs but have so far been pretty disappointed.

To explain... I started listening with a Pink Floyd original master recording CD of The Wall that has always been pleasing to listen to. My CD player is nothing special (a Teac unit purchased in the last few years). I've had two and three chassis CD players with tube output stages in the past. Nonetheless, with the aforementioned "The Wall" disc 1 rendered through the Teac, the CD sounds fantastic. For example, the smashing of the televisions at the segue between "Don't leave me now" and "Another brick in the wall pt 3" are powerful, with well defined images that dart back and forth across the soundstage and leave me ducking to avoid flying glass. Very impressive.

Then I dig out an LP that my wife bought decades ago and prepare to listen to it, anticipating being wowed with its musicality and soundstage and... the singer is somewhere around the right speaker, with no other real soundstage, no instruments imaging anywhere. I tried a few more LPs and they really left me unimpressed.

Then I broke out my Pierre Verany test CDs and tried a few tracks like in phase and out of phase tests. I cannot hear the difference between in and out of phase, but I definitely could decades ago. I tried changing the polarity of one of the speaker wires. No difference, so I changed it back. The the left/right speaker ID. I hear both speakers regardless of what I do, although moving my head from side to side results in "banding" as the balance moves a little from side to side but is coming from both speakers.

It's not crosstalk as far as I can tell. It could be an artifact of the CD player I'm using I guess, but given the frighteningly good sound, dynamics, and imaging I'm getting with most CD playback, I'm stumped.

Anybody got any idea why the in/out of phase test and channel ID tests are giving me such fits?

More to come when I try some more LPs.

Joe