How to listen /audition at audio shows?

The last show I attended one room let us hear 3 different phono stages.

The first two clearly were tube. The third I said to the presenter, "What, solid state?" "Yeah." Not all solid state, I think he said some kind of hybrid, there was a mosfet or something. Point is, I had no trouble hearing to the level of being able to detect one solid state part in a whole component never heard before, in a system never heard before, in a room I had never been in my life, playing music I never heard before.

This was at least 20 years ago.

I don’t know why so many of you find this so hard. I do think however in light of the above maybe pay attention to someone who actually knows what he’s doing? As our second greatest most famous president would say, What have you got to lose?

That's a good point there, when you know how to listen you can do it even over a YT video. When you don't then nothing ever will do, and so instead you spend your whole life thinking up excuses why you can't, or sometimes maybe childish put-downs, anything to avoid addressing the real issue: your own inadequacy.

Always easier to blame the other guy than take responsibility yourself, innit?

Obviously a lot of people swallow the idea it is all but impossible to audition anything at a show. Yet they all go to shows. Which they consider a complete waste of time. Crazier still, other people compliment them on their sage advice. Go figure.

To understand just how goofy this is think about something completely different and yet entirely the same: the test drive. Imagine someone says a test drive is a complete waste of time. They insist you cannot know how the car will handle without driving it up and down your home drive way. There is nothing you can learn about how a car handles on the unfamiliar roads around the dealership. Probably you must take the car on the same test track, drive the same speed, on the same day with the same weather I suppose as well.

When in reality we all know perfectly well exactly what will happen. You know very well how a car feels, how comfortable, quiet, how good the handling, no matter what road you drive it on. If you have any experience at all you are perfectly capable of understanding when you are on gravel vs concrete vs blacktop and all the different conditions of wear and smoothness of each of these- and how to factor this into the sounds and vibrations and everything else you are feeling while driving.

How is this in any way different than being familiar with the way different rooms affect the sound? Can you not hear the people in the room talking? The clues are everywhere.

Honestly, I know people love to repeat what they hear without really thinking things through, because that is, you know, work. But do the work. Don’t be the guy who repeats mindlessly what a waste of time it is- while out the other side of his mouth telling you how important it is that you do it anyway.