Why not look at this in more detail, you feel that you were lacking an involvement / engaging manner to music Strat, could you go into detail for us and describe what you feel constitutes a musical and involving sound.
I haven't come rushing in to reply, as I feel it's a difficult thing to get across using the written word.
I'm going to attempt to answer.
Music is a whole lot more than just sounds that are harmonious, things that just sound nice.
Music is about the way the players interact with each other on both a harmonic and rhythmical level.
The rhythmical thing is for me where things stand or fall - the subtleties of the way players deal with the rhythm of a piece, and the way they play rhythmically off each other is of far more importance than most other aspects. The ability to play in tune with each other is taken for granted - the musicians playing off each other and off the rhythm of the piece is where much of the life and soul of the music lies.
When you have really good musicians that know each other well that rhythmical interplay transcends even playing together in the same room, and frequently has on many recordings.
The rhythmical thing I'm trying to get across could be called swing.
It's subtle , and it's the pulse of the music.
It's related to the beat, but it isn't necessarily on the beat, and it's there on more great recorded music than you'd realise.
Now I've recently had a couple of instances where things weren't quite right, and it was at a friend's place, in a system I know well.
He is fortunate in having a separate room for his audio gear, but recently "The Boss" decided that she'd like to switch rooms and move the living room into what was the listening room.
I went around after all the moving had been done, and settled down for a listen.
I sat through quite a bit of music playing, music I was familiar with in this system, and after about 25 minutes or so I was left with this strange feeling of there being a lack of involvement with the music. It just wasn't doing it for me.
The sounds being made were nice, but the subtle rhythmical stuff just wasn't happening.
Now the room was not fully established, there was no rug on the laminate floor, and the left hand wall as I was sitting facing the speakers had little on it to break up reflections. And there was (and still is) a radiator on the wall.
A towel was draped over the radiator and listening recommenced.
And there was a noticeable improvement in the way the music sounded, and listening had regained its involvement.
I've been around since, and there's a large rug on the floor and pictures and hangings around the room, and the involvement is still there.
I noted that there was a definite warm up period of around 20 minutes for the solid state power amplifier (Musical Fidelity A300CR), after which the system sang to me.
A change of power amp to valves (a Conrad Johnson model with 6550 power valves - I don't know what the model number is) brought an even longer warm up time of 30 to 35 minutes before it gave of its best, after which the system sang again.
Typing this out, and having relayed what is a recent experience, I have put a couple of thoughts into better perspective.
I'm very much more aware of the effect the environment a system is in can have on sound quality, and how it's possible to lose and gain the perception of subtle information.
It's highly likely that hearing the TAD equipment in Tony's normal listening space would be a very different experience to the one I had at Cranage Hall last year