Interesting conundrum

I had an audiophile buddy over last weekend and we spent Saturday afternoon listening to music using my Cary211 AE amps. After dinner, I swapped out the Cary amps for Odyssey Audio Kismet References. The Cary Audio have a very relaxed and involving but detailed presentation. The Kismets are excellent but we always prefer the tube amps. 
I was just playing music off my server and nothing caught our attention until I played a HiRez file ; Hey Nineteen by Steely Dan. As it was playing I was thinking to myself that this recording was over the top. When it ended my buddy said play another song off the album so I did Babylon Sister. At the end of the song I hit pause and we talked about what we had just heard. The Kismets were giving the Cary amps a real run for the money. I tried a regular cd download and it wasn’t anywhere near as involving. Mp  3 was next and we both agreed that the Kismets were showing stark differences between the different formats. On the other hand unless a recording is just plain awful the Cary’s seem to have a good , better or best sound presentation with just about all recordings.
The Kismets have Cardas rca Clear Beyond and Synergistic Research precision reference power cables and the Cary’s have Synergistic Research Atmosphere Level 4 XLR and Voodoo Air Dragon power cords. Both amps are using Cardas Clear Beyond speaker cables feeding my Tekton Design Ulfberhts. All the amps have the same equipment connected to them.Any ideas why Kismets are so unforgiving whereas the Cary’s are very democratic?