I agree that trust your ears can be misleading. We don't actually listen to music. Our ears (and to a far lesser extent, our bodies) pick up changes in air pressure which our brain then interprets as sound. The brain then processes certain sounds as music. Further processing in the brain categorizes the music into familiar archtypes and patterns. The key is that past experiences allows the brain to create internal models of "music" and the process of listening to music is comparing incoming sounds to these existing mental images of music. Effectively your brain is creating the music based upon external stimuli. As with nearly any human ability there's a variability within a population group and some people are better able to form mental models of music. Some people can instantly say whether it's Ben Webster or Coleman Hawkins, and others cannot. Some people can "hear" it's English horn and not an oboe.
What does this have to do with being an audiophile? Your system is a reflection of your mental model of what music should sound like. If you have a "good" mental model and further have the ability to assemble and setup an electronic system in your home that is close to your mental model, then other people of similar ability will say your system sounds good.
Trust your ears. Well, some people can trust their ears, but others should be working harder at developing better mental models of what they are hearing. On an internet forum such as this, it's near impossible to tell in which group a poster resides. This is particularly so when they don't list their system components.
What does this have to do with being an audiophile? Your system is a reflection of your mental model of what music should sound like. If you have a "good" mental model and further have the ability to assemble and setup an electronic system in your home that is close to your mental model, then other people of similar ability will say your system sounds good.
Trust your ears. Well, some people can trust their ears, but others should be working harder at developing better mental models of what they are hearing. On an internet forum such as this, it's near impossible to tell in which group a poster resides. This is particularly so when they don't list their system components.