Is it important to long demo or own HIGH END gear to have a fair accurate view about it?

@mahgister …”I dont know how people can think they had heard something in any room which is not their room , and with any complementary gear around it which is not their gear...”.

I think you learn venues the same way you can learn to separate what the specific speakers contribute, versus amp, preamp, vs, source. Experience. The more venues, live music, and equipment you experience you can start separating them out.

I never said that listening experience in showroom is not informative... It is...

But the only way to know the optimal potential of a piece of gear is in our OWN room with our OWN work and time and with our OWN gear to couple with it ... Thats my point ... I am sure you understand it but i must clarify ...

I will say it more drastically than Mikelavigne because people dont always understand a point if not said in an exagerated way stylistically :

High end has nothing to do with the gear price tag. and even with his design ultimately , but with the way we work the gear we have with passion for music and for learning and passion for acoustics ...

Give me anything relatively not too bad, i will make it sound minimally satisfying or more if i invest time to learn how to do it... the only thing that help a lot is often a dedicated room ... the most difficult element to buy for many of us...my room now is very small ...😊 but i can live now with it without any frustration ...

read me right , for sure design matter, it is better to have the Fritz speakers bookshelves than my low cost active speakers... But i can do with any of the two ...because of what i learned ...

....I'm still stuck on 'grain in the treble', and whether is was wheat or oats....

..but agree with @mapman most issues lie in the rooms we occupy with our 'stuff'...

The 'agreeable average response', given the items within said spaces, will rarely be 'purrfect' unless ones' sig other is either very tolerant, likes 'quality' v. 'visuals', has been trussed up and 'put in storage', or divorced (which cancels out most any 'future improvements')....

Spouse Ev likes our small Maggies' and the sound of the Heils'....I'm working on the Walsh to make them 'room friendly' visually...;)

For me I need to get any piece of gear home before I really know if I like it or not. Demoing gear is frustrating. Just like buying tickets for a Broadway show six months in advance frequently I'm not in the mood come showtime! The best thing in the world is cueing up a record, pouring a glass of wine and settling in for a good listen WHEN I'M READY 

High end, perfectionist, mid fi and others are marketing terms.  Don't take them too seriously.  If you have a passion for well reproduced music then you are by definition a music lover and an audiophile.  Additionally, you don't have to be an audiophile to have music touch your soul.  Your average human can do it with minimal quality equipment.

Short term listening can easily reveal differences between equipment, but long term listening is useful in figuring out whether you really enjoy the differences.

@calvinj  was that 12 year sentence of listening to cables served in the Fed system or was it in a state penal system?  Either way it sounds like a violation of your human rights!

Most of us "seasoned audiophiles" here have developed pretty sensitive antennas over the years and can do a fairly comprehensive evaluation of a prospective audio component in less time than it takes to do an oil change at Jiffy Lube.

But, there’s no substitute for a long-term audition at home when all the factors come into play. Resonant frequency of vessel holding preferred beverage, breed, size, and weight of dog at our feet, cushion material and height of favoite listening chair, orientation of slats/grain of flooring materials. You know, all the other stuff.