Audio Geekery

As I'm getting a new hi-fi soon, I thought I'd give my current one a test so I know how good an improvement my new system is.  I used Requiem For A Dream soundtrack, track 1 (Summer Overture) as a benchmark as it's a great classical track (used in trailers for LOTR:TTT and others no less).  Anyway, I played the CD from my Sony CMT-M90DVD and plugged in my Sennheiser PX200 headphones.  Needless to say, I was quite disappointed by the result, the sound was quite muddy and almost muffled.  I thought my PC's got to be better than this (only got the onboard nForce 2 audio) so I stuck the CD in to my PC and played it using the same headphones.  While the sound quality was better than the hi-fi, it still wasn't great - it sounded like it needed to be more spatial.  I decided to rip the CD into 160k OGG so I could just compare it with my portable MP3 player (iRiver iHP-140).  I attached the same headphones and despite the fact I was using a lossy compressed file, the audio quality was better still!  Who would have thought that my portable player would be better than both my PC and my hi-fi?

Now I wait in eager anticipation to see if my new Denon system can top the lot.  I'm expecting it will considering the glowing reviews it's received from various sources :)