My summation: INVOLVING. Takes your full attention, pulls you into magical moments (to a greater or lesser degree).
1st, an involving performance: composition, music and/or words, musicians, recording skills, engineering skills, production skills, puts a terrifically involving product in your hands
Now: total system: produces excellent Involvement?
Next: evaluate a change of something: equally involving? surprisingly more involving?
Verify the change is real (nothing errantly changed during the gear switch); buy it!