Good to remember ... how to tell what sounds better

my takeaway is that as essential as properly conceived and controlled a/b testing (volume equalized etc etc) is to elucidate sq differences among pieces of gear, there is much much more to it than that -- if the objective is to determine which is truly more pleasurable for ownership and longer term ’living with it’

multiple modes of comparison, over short and longer durations, using various pieces of ancillary gear, are necessary to really help us decide and be confident of the choice

the process must be enjoyed

An interesting take on how to determine your own long term preference when quick switching differences are obvious. I know when I had LP playback and digital of many of the same albums and could compare them at length I never did establish a preference. The subtleties he mentions would seem to disappear on digital at times, but then suddenly all be there depending more on my mood and the state of my hearing apparatus. I never noticed over the long run that vinyl ever produced any better subtleties than CD. I did notice that on some records the apparent equalization was much different than the CD, and I preferred the rolled off highs of the LP. I was able to fix that with a digital EQ comparing the spectral contents until they closely matched. That being said, I do think that sometimes a certain amount of noise and distortion can be actually beneficial to the listening experience, allowing our brain to fill in what's missing in ways that might be more pleasing than having everything explicitly clear. Similarly, HD video played back at 60 fps loses a lot of the magic I experience from 24 fps playback. A little film grain and vignette also seems to add something special. 

" mijostyn says: Listening to one speaker for a week then listening to another speaker for a week is not a good way to evaluate minor differences between speakers because we accommodate to sound. Switching back and forth is always the best way to evaluate equipment but difficult to arrange."

How do you compare an apple to a pear?  You can't. The only way to tell what you like best is through long term evaluation playing different kinds of music. After a while you will get both items under comparison to sound their best and be able to decide which one works best for you. But it takes time to do this, playing a few tracks might get you a rough estimate but you really need time to evaluate fully. The industry pretty much agrees that long term evaluation is the tool used to review products. 

the process must be enjoyed

This is much more important than one might think. Many well-meaning audiophiles shoot themselves in the foot by obsessively playing the same snippets at the same volume over and over again. Then to make things even worse they use one track to evaluate this, one to evaluate that. You all know its true, they are on here every day. This approach virtually guarantees utter boredom and leads to the same problem one of its practitioners already noted of being able to listen for only one thing at a time.  

This is not normal. This is borderline neurotic. 

Every time I have people over, and I have a bunch of them coming this weekend, I always make sure and ask what kind of music do they enjoy and let them know its all about them. Because I am really, really into listening and nobody but nobody ever gonna be listening to crap that turns them off. Music they love, that gets them going, whatever it is, that they will focus on like a laser beam. 

Think about that and consider just how screwed up so many audiophiles are. Its almost like they search out the most unlistenable music and play it over and over again not because they like it but because has some little artifact of a sound they think is somehow essential to evaluating the perfect whatever. 

I was lucky and broke out of this mold early on. Took my little stack of CDs with me, started listening to a McCormack DNA1, knew I found my amp when I noticed my list of audio tics was the last thing on my mind, I was just enjoying the music. 

Some of the best playbacks I've ever heard were on  really crappy systems on the beach in the Dominican Republic and in the mountains of northwest Vietnam.