In general, I agree with the clothing analogy, but I think a food recipe might be more accurate, in that it allows for more precise tweaking.
With clothes you are stuck with the subject person’s size, shape and appearance and face it, some of us aren’t exactly runway candidates.
With a recipe there are more components and therefore more options that will affect the final satisfaction level. Take the soup I made last night. Basic ingredients are sausage, beans, some spices, potatoes, vegetables and chicken stock.
Change from breakfast sausage to a Tuscan pork sausage, add some cayenne and cumin and use my homemade brown chicken stock and it is heavenly.
As to the hiatus. It’s something I have never done, so I can’t comment. What I will say is that the quality of my system, while plebeian to some of our $150K members, is still at a level where I rarely analyze and listen at the same time.