Monstrous power cables

OP,

Learning to listen takes time. It is a big challenge. Music is constantly changing… instruments, notes, timing, etc. one’s mind focus workes by concentrating on one thing at a time… but with music, that is constantly changing and our memories for sounds are not that good. So, this creates a difficult problem when comparing equipment. If the difference is big… not a problem, but if subtle it is much harder.

With experience, one learns the nomenclature of describing sound, and as you perceive and understand sound you can then be able to discern greater and greater subtlety.

Professional reviewers take notes because they are able to discriminate among dozens of variables. It’s like the number of terms Eskimo have for kinds of snow (true or not). Novices have a hard time discriminating and describing sound. What ever it takes to get your arms around different equipment is part of the learning experience. This relentless pursuit to understand sound reproduction is what allows you to master it. Keep at it, you are doing great.

For me. After a brief listen, which helps me identify any major different characteristics, I just listen to whatever it is for a week. Then switch, for a week. I know what my system sounds like. I listen to it 3 1/2 hours a day… every day. The more subtle characteristics come out over time.. they are processed by my subconscious… the more powerful side of your brain. A good way to look at your mind is the elephant and the rider… the elephant is your subconscious and the rider is you conscious mind (the dialog in your head).

Anyway, I know a number of very experienced audiophiles. We can very quickly identify differences between components with complete accuracy in minutes… blindfolded or not, since most of us close our eyes when we listen anyway. There are people that can hear, identify, and characterize I will never hear or understand. The more you try the better you get. 

Pfffttt, listen to the music not your gear, period.

@audiodwebe , the power cords on your dacs are supposed to be different, meaning if you have already choosen the ones that are best sounding for the gear you are using.

More often than not, the ’wrong’ power cord will change the way some piece of gear sounds and even more if  that piece of gear is new to you, it may lead you to ’wrong’ conclusion.

I guess the best advice how to try something new, is to leave it in your system for some time and than after some period to change it with piece of gear you wish to compare it with (cord, or dac, or whatever)

It happened to me more than once, A-B changes,sometimes I could not tell the difference, or it was very subtle.Lets say, after a week (or two weeks for both things I wished to try) of listening, I could decide without a doubt which piece of gear fits more to my perceived reference of sound reproduction.

If you are honest with yourself (and why you should not be) the blind is not important, imho.

Recently read a good thought about blind testing written by Mike Lavigne, as he challenged anyone to assemble great sounding system by picking components by blind listening, vs his way with ’open eyes’....it was a joke, but he has a point

Thanks for all your suggestions.  I do appreciate them all.

Normally (like 95% of the time), when I compare a new component I’ll put it into my system for an extended period of time.  The only times it’ll come out quickly is if it bothers me and makes listening to music not enjoyable.  Those instances are pretty rare, however.  
 

With the recent comparisons, I wanted to be able to do a quick side by side test.  The reason:  I’d recently picked up three different streamers and DACs to test out and, as I don’t want to keep them all, wanted to figure out which one to let go.

First, I listened to the Stack streamer with the Denafrips Aries II combo for many weeks.  I thought the rig sounded great.

I then swapped to the Lumin U1 Mini with Benchmark DAC3.  I was, and still am, having trouble getting the Lumin to play nicely with Roon.  It keeps either stopping or getting jammed to the point I have to restart it.  Kind of a PITA.  It plays fine with the Lumin app but I haven’t figured out how to inport my ripped library which is also a pain.

The sound, though, has been quite impressive.  I enjoy this combo better than the previous one, though not by much.  This rig seems to extract a bit more info from the recordings.  And I had been listening to this rig for a couple of weeks, as well.

The reason I put the PSA back into my setup to directly compare the two was because I had finished taking fotos of the PSA unit, got the box from the crawl space, and was going to list it for sale.  But just for fun, and before bidding adieu, I thought I do the direct comparison.

And now I’m not so sure which I prefer.  Since I’m in no hurry I’ll probably listen to the two for a while.

For a fairly recent A/B experience, I have a Maverick Audio TubeMagic D2 DAC that has parallel solid state and tube buffer outputs.  I had listened to both regularly and formed a strong enough preference for the solid state output that I didn't even both having interconnects hooked up to the tube buffer output.  In the process of upgrading, I purchased a Schiit Modi Multibit DAC and found it quite enjoyable.  After several weeks of listening I had the idea to compare it to the tube buffer output on my MA DAC and oddly enough found them indistinguishable to my ear.  I can only attribute temporary preference for the Schiit Modi Multibit DAC to confirmation bias/placebo.  I also have a Pioneer Elite SACD player that was indistinguishable from the solid state output on my MA DAC.  I found some information on upgrading the MA DAC, so upgraded the tube (Western Electric 396A) and three op amps (Sparkos Labs) and now strongly prefer the tube buffer output and find it far superior to my SACD player.  Now that I have an upgraded interconnect on my DAC I don't even bother using the SACD player anymore as it's simply disappointing in a way that makes any A/B comparison a waste of time.

If time and money were no object, I have have two identical pieces of everything so that I could always compare A/B with only a single piece of gear changing.  I'd confirm that I couldn't tell any difference with the dual setup and then swap a single item and compare and see if I could distinguish a difference.  It would be fun, but totally impractical.

I read on a forum somewhere a great quote that if an audiophile can see a difference they will hear a difference and I think there's some truth to that though I don't discount that with enough time and effort some people will be able to distinguish things that are far more subtle than most of us can.