It takes us a little longer to absorb our fullest impressions aurally. Visually we catch on to a lot right away...aurally not so quick, we are predominantly visual creatures...but, yeah, we still have inherently good auditory memory.
DB test all you want, but there will never be a substitute for living with your gear for many months or even years. It’s certainly not the fastest result, but as tests of perceived audio quality go, it’s the most revealing.
The A/B-ing can tell us what differences in sound there might be, but it may tell us much less about which differences we might be willing to live with for now vs those for the longest run. What sounds fine enough to us today might sound more tiresome 5 years from now. Those are the chickens that most often come back to roost.
But all of that to me is just the nature of the beast.
DB test all you want, but there will never be a substitute for living with your gear for many months or even years. It’s certainly not the fastest result, but as tests of perceived audio quality go, it’s the most revealing.
The A/B-ing can tell us what differences in sound there might be, but it may tell us much less about which differences we might be willing to live with for now vs those for the longest run. What sounds fine enough to us today might sound more tiresome 5 years from now. Those are the chickens that most often come back to roost.
But all of that to me is just the nature of the beast.