"I Trust My Ears"

I don't know. I just buy my gear according to what Amir says and look at its measurements all night. That's fine with me. Also, my doctor says I'm half deaf but my engineering degree says otherwise. So there's that.... 

Sometimes I get fooled for a short time, but usually get it right. I try it, removed it, try it again, remove it, and try it again, remove it, wait a while and try it again.....because I mostly subscribe to a "First thought wrong" philosophy. Case in point B & W and Focal speakers, their detail sounds magical for short periods.....but takes all of the joy out of the music for me, and shortened my listening time.

@vthokie83 I really like this. It articulates the uncertainty and fickleness inherent to the process. How not all differences are good, and how a positive trait may eventually turn out to be a negative one given time. 

I respect that.

Compare the honesty of this statement with the usual "as I moved up and upgraded to the next level in their lineup, the improvement in my system was profound at every step" tripe. But I digress.

I am not at a point - I almost wrote "sadly" - where I choose to undertake that painstaking search for the last few percentage points. I am still focused on improving my core system and my sources, so I feel that turning my attention elsewhere would be distracting and maybe even misleading at this point.

Maybe someday. 

Until then, thank you for a thoughtful post. 

I would not consider myself a 'true' audiophile because I have always had the philosophy that my goal is to create a sonic experience that I find the most pleasing - and not necessarily to try and replicate exactly what "...the artist intended / the music sounded like in the studio..." etc.

I would qualify that statement with the end result of me efforts being still fairly close to the intent of the artist and / or studio engineers... but for me, MY listening satisfaction is placed above trying to achieve the flattest response curve, lowest roll-off numbers, etc.

My only gripe is when 'true' audiophiles try to tell me that "you just don't know any better..." My retort is usually something like "is that knowledge of what is 'better' actually such a positive thing - when at least I can say that I am thoroughly satisfied with my system's performance, and I thoroughly enjoy the listening experience I have... while you are perpetually NEVER satisfied and always feeling like your system is 'unfinished' and 'not good enough yet..."???

devinplombier

I am not yet at the "last few percentage points" stage, I'm still where upgrades can make a really large improvement.

This year I'll complete my listening room, and then I'll add at least one set of speakers, a new streamer, and a new DAC......so far I have at least a year trying new speakers, streamers, and DACs; so I should be near a decision when funds clear up.

I trust myself for what I like.  I've been to countless live music events of every kind; a world class symphony and opera company, blues , jazz, rock music venues of every kind in town.  I've seen Solti conduct Verdi's Falstaff, Wagners Ring at the Lyric, to a spitting fight at a Dead Kennedys show at the Aragon( Jello Biafra started to yelling spit on me at the audience. You had to have been their, or not), and evry kind of modernist, world music imaginable.  I may want to read other people's opinions on music here, but in the end, it's almost always my first instinct/choice that I go with, and most importantly, enjoy listening to. 

"How many of us account for the fact that the subtler differences we think we’re hearing may just be our brains telling us there’s something when there’s nothing just because it seems there should be?"  Well, then so be it.  It's my brain that is going to enjoy, or not, what I hear.

   And "We must train our hearing by tuning our brain with thinking concepts and setting experiments in a system/room with different musical styles",   "Tastes must be educated.",  " We need acoustics concepts to understand audio",  "Crocodiles had tastes and we cannot convince them their tastes are bad habits...A part of our brain is a crocodile..." and on and on.  @mahgister  I would be so depressed if I had to go through all that to enjoy a concert.  In all of that, I have never heard any system reproduce any live music event I've been to.  I've heard spectacular systems producing great sound, and I have listened to a live Jazz performance, then played back in the same room, not moving from my spot.  I own one recording that puts me almost inside an orchestra, something like I once heard at  Symphony Center from a front row seat just left of the conductor.