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

" 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.

But please don't forget why we strive for that exact moment when the experience at that moment reflecting a past experience allows us to emotionally connect with the tru 3 dimension experience of being in the moment 

If my foot is tapping and my head is bobbing, then it sounds good.