Cable auditions - Hard Work?

Mine too are hard work, and I too question whether I'm hearing a difference. Don't know if you've lost it or never had it. :-) I know I've never been a GEA; I have to work to hear differences in cable, electronics, etc.

After conditioning it for days with my VCR driving an input on my preamp, I insert the new cable in the tape-monitor loop of my preamp. (This TM loop contains no electronics.) I determine if the insertion of the cable is audible. If it is, I reject it immediately. If it's not, it has passed the first test and I then replace my system cable with the new stuff, and also reinsert the 'old' cable to verify differences. It's still hard work.
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Ideally, I like to listen to new cables for about a month before I form an opinion. I also like to have the cable burned in by someone like The Cable Burner Co..

I've done many cable comparisons over the years, while I may start off with short listening sessions and A/B comparisons I've found that making the best decision only comes from long listening sessions over several hours and days. I know the cable is a contender if I stop analyzing and instead just get lost in the music.
Another reason that it is important to do long listening sessions over several days is that cables often sound much better after having at least a 24 hour period in which to just sit and settle in.

Oldpet, I find doing amp and speaker auditions much harder work for obvious reasons. My process for audtioning cables is a threefold process: 1) Put one cable at a time in my system and do no serious listening untill the amount of time for burn-in that the company suggests is reached. 2) Use the same 6 to 8 recordings that I have been using for the last 30 years to measure differences/changes such as timbres, soundstage, imaging, air around players, liquidity, bass/prat, high end extentsion, and details. Normally, anything new in your system will sound striking at first, but no necessarly an improvement. 3) Finally, and I think it might be the most important step, after about three days of serious listening, go back to your reference and decide if new cable really is an improvement over your older cable. I have auditioned some cables that were so unpleasant I did not wait for the three days because I knew that I did not like them, so why bother. Other times, some cables were so right that I knew that they were superior to my reference, which turned out to be valid, but I always go back and put the original cable back in, just to validate my first impression.

Save yourself. Make a choice then never, ever go back and do it again. Comparing cables truly sucks and should only be done with one goal in mind ... to pick one then enjoy it forever.

Bob