while I will admit that I am more of a videophile type than a audio junky, this argument is very valid in that field(video), the more revealing a system you get the more you see the better or the worse a piece of media is, on a lower quality system everything is leveled in sorts, this correlates to audio as well

this is one possibility that has to be given and is one that I encounter with customers very often, especially with video, not saying this is the case here but a possibility

thanks

-Gary Murrell
http://www.custom-ht.com/oppopowerbuy.html
My Personal HT setup