@folkfreak Thanks for the suggestion! I'll definitely check those out.
I think I got some pretty helpful suggestions here so thanks all for that! I want to point out two things though:
One, I am not a fan of specification based decision making. My ears are the only judge. This is mainly because everyone has some level of preference or let's say a certain "characteristic" that his brain accepts as "great sounding music". For instance, I've had several co-workers and friends came listening to the same track repeatedly on my Parasound Halo A51 and McIntosh MC275 (tube). The amps are closed in a cabinet and are not disclosed to the listener. I found that except 1 of them who says he couldn't hear any difference, the other 4 individuals all said that the MC275 sounded better to their ears and they were able to pick up some subtle instruments in the background. Yet, many science articles seem to suggest tubes carries more distortion.
Secondly, similar to #1, I think most of you who prefer LP had some experience with LP, perhaps before digital ever came to existence. I think our brains perhaps are conditioned to accept the norm as "the best". An analogy can be made for the choice of food. What taste good for one culture may be "inedible" for another or vice versa. As mentioned above, one may prefer a single characteristic in music and as soon as that characteristic is missing, your brains notices immediately and thinks "WTF this isn't music". However, that characteristic or set of characteristics may only be appealing to the one specific listener and is not universal.
So in the end, there's no double blind test that could resolve this because individual preference will still exist regardless whether the person knows what gears are playing. I think the best is for me to visit local boutiques and actually listen and find what my ears like.
I think I got some pretty helpful suggestions here so thanks all for that! I want to point out two things though:
One, I am not a fan of specification based decision making. My ears are the only judge. This is mainly because everyone has some level of preference or let's say a certain "characteristic" that his brain accepts as "great sounding music". For instance, I've had several co-workers and friends came listening to the same track repeatedly on my Parasound Halo A51 and McIntosh MC275 (tube). The amps are closed in a cabinet and are not disclosed to the listener. I found that except 1 of them who says he couldn't hear any difference, the other 4 individuals all said that the MC275 sounded better to their ears and they were able to pick up some subtle instruments in the background. Yet, many science articles seem to suggest tubes carries more distortion.
Secondly, similar to #1, I think most of you who prefer LP had some experience with LP, perhaps before digital ever came to existence. I think our brains perhaps are conditioned to accept the norm as "the best". An analogy can be made for the choice of food. What taste good for one culture may be "inedible" for another or vice versa. As mentioned above, one may prefer a single characteristic in music and as soon as that characteristic is missing, your brains notices immediately and thinks "WTF this isn't music". However, that characteristic or set of characteristics may only be appealing to the one specific listener and is not universal.
So in the end, there's no double blind test that could resolve this because individual preference will still exist regardless whether the person knows what gears are playing. I think the best is for me to visit local boutiques and actually listen and find what my ears like.