Glenn Richards wrote:

After setting up my system in the new house recently, my friend (who
knows a lot less than he thinks about audio)

Funny how similar people seem to find each other.

So I rigged up a little test, and played Duelling Banjos from Hayseed
Dixie's "Hot Piece Of Grass" CD. (Don't ask, if you don't already
know... just... don't!)

Started on the Technics. Intro sounded fine, but when the acoustic
double bass kicked in the sound just went muddy and confused.

snip

(No, I don't want to go into the "it's all
in your mind" arguments here so don't even bother, it's not relevant to
the point above.)

It's all in your mind, unless you were doing something stupid in the test
such as feeding the Arcam into the tape-monitor input and the Technics into
a line input that was being overloaded.

You could try to demonstrate the effect you think you hear. You have a decent
soundcard so put two short wav files on your website of the intro and bass from
each player. 16/44.1 will do, just keep the gain the same and use the same
leads. You will probably want to use the same mains filter and let them warm up
for a day or so. Perhaps you should get each player aligned, for a fair test,
by your local Feng Shui consultant. Have you checked for ley lines?

--
Eiron

No good deed ever goes unpunished.