Walking that fine line: What would you do ?

I recently installed an amp on loan from a friend in one of my systems. We swapped amps just to "compare notes". I had an amp that he wanted to hear and vice-versa. The fact that we are a couple of States apart makes it hard to do first hand comparisons with each other, so we have to be selective, especially with amps. Between the shipping costs and the potential damage, this is the first time that we've done this. If we were both happy with the results, we were simply going to swap amps and compensate the differences in cash.

As it turns out, i like the amp quite a bit. It seems to be a good match for the preamp and speakers that i'm using it with. There is only one "problem". Whereas the system has always sounded very musical with good accuracy ( hard to achieve ), i've now moved up a notch on the "accuracy" scale. I'm now hearing a little deeper into the discs. While most would call this a step in the right direction in terms of being "revealing", i'm beginning to think that it is "annoying" and "distracting". Don't get me wrong, the amp / system sound quite good, maybe the best it ever has. It is not "etched" or "analytical" by any means. I could use all of the superlative's to describe what i'm hearing, but i've now got one nagging problem.

I can now hear just how much the engineers are "twistin' knobs" on several recordings that previously sounded "warm and sweet" i.e. very enjoyable with no distractions. One in particular is Diana Krall's Love Scenes. On some songs, you can easily hear the faders come up as she begins to sing and drop down as she stops. This is evident as the noise floor increases and you hear more hiss. When the mics are open, you have less of a "black background" between musical notes from the instruments. On some of the other songs, they simply leave the mic open most of the time and you hear hiss throughout most of it. On a few others, the leave the mic open, then fade it in a few spots, open it back up, etc... Some of this was obvious before, but not anywhere near the extent that it is now.

While most of us would not consider this a big deal, it kind of gets annoying after a while. To me, it's kind of like looking for a smaller hidden picture within a much larger picture. Once you find it, it is all that you can concentrate on. How you could've missed it for all that time is beyond you. So it is with this system now. In other words, these "small details" now distract me from the "big performance" taking place.

Has anybody else run into a similar situation and what did you do ? I'm open to suggestions as i'm kind of twisting and turning on this one. I like the amp a lot, BUT.... Sean
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