Amir and Blind Testing

@chayro You raise a good point. IMHE, the effect is magnified swapping components after just a track or two. I've seen this many times at local audio club and store demo events. 

When I do store demos, I find it much more helpful to listen for an hour or two, switch and replay the same tracks on the 2nd component. Sure, going weeks or more would be better, but excluding home demos, that's just not happening. Unfortunately, break-in issues make "30day return" home demos on new gear hard to judge too. 

Putting it all together usually leads me to buying used broken-in, depreciated gear when possible and considering my purchase an extended home demo at the cost of potentially reselling effort/cost. Cheers,

Spencer

Amir from Audio Science Review. Quite prolific and a great believer in measurements. 

Pardon my ignorance, but who is Amir, and what is ASR?

I know. I usually mark my calendar for a month before making any conclusions. But it’s not just blind testing. By Amir’s logic, any back and forth testing would be invalid, except, I would imagine, in the most egregious of cases.  

I agree.  It can take months for me to fully appreciate an upgrade. Something I never noticed before in a passage or song I may not have listened to since getting the upgrade.  While the idea of blind testing sounds logical, I personally don't think it applies to upgrades or differences that can be deemed subtle.  Some differences can be discerned immediately, many I think not.