True or False?

Good listening skills for musical playback enjoyment include the ability to mask out unwanted sounds and anomalies and reconstruct in our heads things that aren’t really heard. Bad listening skills would be to be able to hear things as they really are. If you could do that, you would never hear a phantom center image. You would always correctly interpret all the sounds to be coming directly from each speaker. That would suck. Nothing wrong with learning to better imagine sound that isn’t there, except perhaps that it can make us vulnerable to magical claims that are sometimes rather expensive if we don’t remain aware of what’s going on.

Psychoacoustic has laws about timing threshold of wavefront from direct, early and late reflections and from back reflections for example...

These laws has nothing to do with bad or good listening skills...These laws work for anyone.... If you come to my room you will listen the 3-d holographic as real this illusion is for me....

You apply them and you will listen to a holographic 3-D real illusion which you can control in some way and modify at will....And applying these laws in my room dont make me "vunerable to magical claims".... It is the opposite, because i know how to create any "illusions" out of my mechanical room controls...

Then i dont fall for cheap costly acoustical "tweak" sells to those who dont know how ton control their room...I will not name a company here.... 😁

In acoustic, an  illusion controlled is the perceived reality....

I totally agree about the earlier comment regarding listening skills.  Very important.

Put aside the issue of listening to different pieces in A/B comparisons without making sure the volume levels are accurately matched before listening.  Because this will give the totally false impression that one hears something better on one than the other.  But, it is only  a volume difference that gives that impression.

Now, listening skills.  Same as for wine.  If you don't know what to taste for, you are going into the comparison missing information.  If one doesn't know what a real cymbal sounds like or  what a real violin (don't get me started on the differences between violins) sound like versus electronic violin, you wouldn't know if what you are hearing is accurate or not.

I would go to concerts, especially live un-amplified concerts, orchestra performances, etc. and take my children and friends.  listen and enjoy.  go home and listen to analog and digital recordings.  They would comment that the cymbals sound tinny or not close to as real as what they heard earlier.  Same is true for musical instruments, etc.  Ask them to close their eyes at concerts and tell me where the musicians were on the stage.  They had no trouble doing that.  Listen to recorded playback music and on some systems, they couldn't tell you.  On others with the same recordings, they could.

They were starting to get a grasp on what to listen for and the differences based on the equipment they were listening to.  then they realized that their ear buds, inexpensive systems may sound great as background music, but when they sit listen, it didn't sound right.

That is the education of listeners.

Same for wine and other things.  I had alcoholics in my family and it caused some negative destructive issues in the house.  I didn't drink or like wine at all for quite some time.  Weddings, parties, etc.  yuck.  Why are people smiling and acting like they were enjoying themselves drinking this crap.

It wasn't until much later that a good friend turned me on to Napa/Sonoma and wine tasting that I realized that I just never had a good glass of wine before and then started on the journey of enjoying and learning what is good and what isn't with regards to the various varietals.  Some wine, I just don't care for.  Others, well...  

 the issue is also for non-Audiophiles, they aren't really listeners.  They are playing music as background music while doing other things.  Which is not a bad thing at all.  But, they aren't really sitting and listening and would never justify spending the ungodly expensive amounts audiophiles spend on equipment. 

I listen to a piece of equipment either in my system A/B comparing or in the dealer's store (hopefully in my system).  If I'm happy with it enough to purchase it, I rarely, if ever feel the need to tweak it.

Again, as I mentioned previously, correcting the room to me isn't a tweak.  Upgrading equipment isn't a tweak to me also. That is just getting to that next level of "there" for me.  I actually don't consider replacing interconnect cables or speaker cables as tweaks also.  vibration control? tweak, fuses? enough people have reported significant  improvements to the extent that as an Electronics/Electrical Engineer, I can't dismiss it.  If it is in the signal path, then any changes can affect the sound.  Not convinced about power supply and rail fuses.  But, who knows?

anyway, I don't believe that most high end manufacturers deny that certain tweaks work, they are saying that what they designed and installed works great in their view, it isn't cost effective to install $2000 fuses and basically they haven't seen the need to install that fuse, low availability resistors or caps.  Or as the case of many manufacturers that provide SE versions later on, they caps or resistors that were used to upgrade from regular to SE version may not have readily available in sufficient quantity and reliable enough in the early versions.

enjoy

Hello,
I feel like I am going to get a verbal beat down for this. Every audiophile should try a Puritan PSM156 power conditioner. It doesn’t matter what media you prefer to play. That’s the beauty. It improves every component plugged into it. Each plug is isolated from one another. Most have banks of four. That means the four in the same bank are contaminating each other. Not with the Puritan PSM156. It filters everything it needs to without chocking the sound. I hope you have dealers that let you demo one. It has to be fully broken in which takes 12 days. I call it the 12 days of Christmas. On the twelfth day you get the best gift of all. Unbelievable sound! Stop tweeking until you try this.
 If you are in the Chicagoland area the store I purchase my Hifi gear from lets you try before you buy. 
https://holmaudio.com/
I hope all of you get to try this. It’s like lifting a vale off your entire system. 

@minorl - sorry to come in late, to ask you this:

So, no, I would not be trying to find the small producer, latest and greatest caps and resistors, If i'm fairly certain that they may not be available later on.

Have you had a crossover using the highest quality parts fail on you?
If so, what make and model? and did the driver windings fail before the crossover did?

generalizations such as that embodied in the op’s query are pretty much useless in a world where the specifics in any situation drive all outcomes