Some years back I bought a $300-ish NAD cd player for my 2nd system. Just out of curiosity, I did an a/b against my twice-as-expensive Music Hall which was my "good" player at the time.
Based on that comparison, I thought the NAD did most things better, and after switching back and forth for a couple hours, I decided to keep the NAD in the better system, and put the Music Hall upstairs. A couple weeks later, I realized that I was never listening to entire cd's anymore. There was something missing with the NAD in place. It sounded good, I always got bored quickly.
Eventually, I switched back and found that I enjoyed the system more with the Music Hall, even though I couldn't identify anything it did better. So whatever magic that player had was apparently too subtle to pick up on when doing a/b comparisons. Lesson learned is that for me at least I've got to give a component enough time that I'm really just listening to the music.
By the way, I still have both players, and it's really a crap shoot as to which will work better in a particular setup. Turns out the NAD isn't inherently boring-it just was in that particular setup.
Based on that comparison, I thought the NAD did most things better, and after switching back and forth for a couple hours, I decided to keep the NAD in the better system, and put the Music Hall upstairs. A couple weeks later, I realized that I was never listening to entire cd's anymore. There was something missing with the NAD in place. It sounded good, I always got bored quickly.
Eventually, I switched back and found that I enjoyed the system more with the Music Hall, even though I couldn't identify anything it did better. So whatever magic that player had was apparently too subtle to pick up on when doing a/b comparisons. Lesson learned is that for me at least I've got to give a component enough time that I'm really just listening to the music.
By the way, I still have both players, and it's really a crap shoot as to which will work better in a particular setup. Turns out the NAD isn't inherently boring-it just was in that particular setup.