Perception

Have I forgotten anything?

Geoff, what happens when you take the Audiophile out of the room? : )

Often times when a band comes to town, they will play on multiple nights.  Talk to people who have attended all, for this example, three shows...and you will likely get feedback where person one preferred show two...and person two preferred show three...and so on.

How can this be....same band, same venue, same song set, etc. There are a lot of explanations...different mood of the listener each night....different humidity....different temperature....ever so slightly different settings by the sound man....and so on.

No home audio system is a PERFECT representation of live music...no matter how good it may be.  And, because of our own day to day variability as listeners, even the best home systems will provide what seems to be day to day variations in how we hearing and feeling the same song, on the same system, at the same time of day..etc.  Some people resolve this with multiple systems (kind of a today's preferred flavor is X and not Y).

One more comment....I suspect that this is why people who prefer headphones often own multiple headphones....and today choose to listen with headphone A and tomorrow prefer to listen with headphone B.

Perhaps leaving the listening room's a good idea, regarding this issue:  Does anyone else really hate it, when they're singing along with a song, and the artist screws up the lyrics?

This thread has officially become hijacked.