Here's the setup:
Based solely on comments here and many other places about that "Von Schweikert sound", I decided to take the plunge... for some strange reason, because my present system isn't that bad... I thought.
Anyway... I need more "juice" for 'em, and found a guy on Audiogon that happened to live in my town selling an amp that looked liked it'd fill the bill. On the phone, I found out he was in the recording business, serious about his music, and he invited me over to demo the gear. He mentioned some of the music he listens to, so as an experiment and a treat, I thought I'd bring along a concert that I'd taped to give to him.
Here's the "wow":
I arrived at his home... there's got a large, custom designed (by someone with a "name"), dedicated, "music room"... high and arched ceiling... custom curved acoustic panels with grill cloth covers... $20k Wilson Watt/Puppy 7's... $5k Sony SCD-1 player... $2k ICs... you get the idea. We spun some silver CDs and a few SACDs for quite a spell... orgasmic sound.
Here's the "ouch":
I then told him I have a CD for him that I taped at this year's ACL Fest... argh!!!... sounded like the band was underwater... neither of us could listen for more than a few minutes. While there's a sizable degradation when listening to my tapes on my present system, it's still pleasurable... totally not the case here.
So, for those few of you that have listened to anything I've taped and you've got a true audiophile setup... all I can say is "sorry mon"... at least it was free