Erm... but you said "the bloke with the Micromega was gutted btw". Don't you think the NAD guy might somehow have got the idea from the rest of you that the Micromega should have been much better? Then leave the idea to grow in private for a couple of days, and hey presto, he's ready to elope with the Micromega

And even if he didn't get the impression from you folks that the Micromega had a much posher pedigree - which I find very unlikely from your description - he could just as easily have formed that impression himself without listening at all. If he'd never heard of Micromega, perhaps his knowledge of hifi stuff isn't all that comprehensive - he could then easily assume (subconsciously if not consciously) that anything he hadn't heard of was an esoteric high-end monster. It's not hard to imagine him then convincing himself that, yes, the Micromega was much better than his NAD after all.