I guess that is why there is a whole industry building DAC's, each of which "colours" the sound by it's processing of the digital signal to analogue.

What happens to the sound Mojo when you play "direct" through the Onkyo vs the Pioneer. In theory, "direct" is supposed to bypass any signal processing and play exactly what the engineer encoded but again, the signal still needs to be converted from digital to analogue somewhere.

Last night I brought up the Onkyo from the basement (holy crap I have a lot of things plugged into it! Had to make sure everything was properly labeled to make it easier to put back in!) to test if "more power" affects the Hawks. Well, to my relief, the Hawks that I remembered came back to life. Clearly something has happened to the NAD (which I already suspected as the CD/DVD player wasn't working). So, time to peruse Canuck Audio Mart for some exotic 2-channel equipment that I can afford. smile