Hey Trelja........

I had the Parasound 1000 before acquiring the Cambridge about the same time as Trelja. The Parasound was nice but VERY rolled off in terms of resolution of inner detail and imaging. Some would say that lended an analog-like quality to the Parasound but directly comparing CD to vinyl versions of recordings shows that much detail is missing from the CD without the warmth and imaging of the vinyl. The Cambridge, OTOH, gives you all of the spatial cues of the venue, the "air" between the instruments, and for the most part, the correct timbre and overtones of them;for example, trumpets have "bite" and can be discerned from cornets and a wooden flute can be told from metal. It is also enjoyable to listen to, allowing you to forget all those components of recorded sound and simply participate as listener which is what the high end is all about.It is better at that than the AR Complete and the best NAD which I auditioned against. You're missing a great deal of the music, Sean.

Sean-just to carify, I briefly auditioned the Complete and NAD but lived with the Parasound for quite awhile. It was the Parasound that I referred to as pleasant more from what it omitted than anything it conveyed. When you listen to "California", cut six on Joni Mitchell's Blue, you should hear the sympathetic vibration of the unplucked overtone strings on Joni's 12 string, the Parasound only hinted at it. The Cambridge gives you the full measure. Likewise in the "Trinity Sessions" there are all sorts of things going on in the hall besides Margo and her brothers. Before the Cambridge, it never even occured to me to check the liner notes to discover the performance was live. No coughing, though.
These are asides, I don't listen for oddities but they are a part of the listening experience, the ambience. Perhaps a particular microphone is more attuned to picking up this or that frequency off axis. I've heard it often enough, sitting in the back row of the orchestra, to know why a really professional producer checks to be sure that the snares on an unused snare drum are loose so they don't sizzle every time the Tuba joins the band. (Of course, I've NEVER brought along a paperclip to put on the drum) The central issue of owning high resolution equipment though, at least to me, is re-creating the sense of the hall. If a soprano is overloading the acoustics of that hall, I want to hear the distortion, all of it. When Heifetz is tearing away at a cadenza full of double stops with wild downbows I want to hear every harmonic and when Hendrix is setting Marshalls on fire I want to smell the smoke and feel the panic of the roadies.