Time for an update.

As you all know, I had a Chromecast Audio connected to a 17-year old Denon which wass connected to the M5s. I liked it. Then I decided to try out my Pioneer 2-channel receiver (dual mono construction) in place of the Denon. As I reported above, it was a revelation. Then I ran the Pioneer's pre-outs through an outboard amp which has twice the voltage gain of the Pioneer and it sounded even better. I think the only reason it sounds better is because it can get louder. The amp doesn't add anything else. Even the transient response appears to be the same between just the Pioneer and the Pioneer mated to the external amp.

Fast forward to today. I decided to take the Pioneer out of the picture and connect my Chromecast audio directly to the external amp. Would you believe I like it better with the Pioneer in the picture?

I thought "This doesn't make any sense". So I connected the Pioneer downstream of my Onk to feed my M100s. The Chromecast is connected to my Onk. Wow! It gave life to the M100s compared to just the Onk. That made me even more puzzled because why should it be better? If the Onk's crummy pre-amp is feeding it garbage, garbage should be coming out.

So I then connected the Chromecast Audio to the Pioneer. In other words, I took the Onk out. Now even better! The dynamics improved and so did everything else. I then connected the external amp and got the same results as the M5 system. Louder but not better in any other way.

So I suspected the Pioneer was "coloring the sound" in a good sort of way. I looked up the model and saw in the description it was tuned by Air Studios. I had no idea what that was all about. Apparently this is some place in the UK that tunes audio equipment to make it sound better???

I think this explains what I am hearing. No doubt the Pioneer is superior to the Denon and the Onk in many ways and hence I am hearing more dynamic range and improved everything. Part of it though is the receiver is not "flat" throughout the audio band. The M5 and M100 woofers are being worked more with the Pioneer. More so than with the external amp which has twice the voltage gain of the Pioneer! Other things are different also. I think there's less weight to the upper bass/lower mid-range resulting in a more transparent sound.

Given all this, I am starting to think some receivers and maybe even amps and pre-amps do sound different relative to each other because some manufacturers choose to embed their own sonic signature into the amp. This is actually no different than speakers. It's well known that speaker manufacturers select different weighting factors when interpreting the parametric curves for their speakers. This results in speakers which are borne of the same methodology but sound different because Joe believes his coefficients are superior to Bob's.

We're all being toyed with. We're all part of a big experiment.