I Just Know It's BS ... But I Have't Tried It Yet

Sorry. I think I was unclear: I meant critical listening, not listening for pleasure. But then if the music lover becomes an audiophile, critical listening always creeps in and often enough spoils all the fun...........

Our ears - to my mind - are the worst of "test instruments" to judge a given system, but it is the only one we have. It takes a long learning curve to come to trust what you hear.
To get there, you must have developed at least some sense for your inner preferences, your emotional state in a given moment as well of course, just to mention two outer factors, the weather condition and the state your electrical grid is in. Apart from that, to listen as objectively as possible, I feel one should strive for the same state of mind, as FREUD told us as desirable, when listening to his patients: A free floating attention, a state of inner calm, wanting nothing, expecting nothing.
Good listening is as difficult as ZEN. (:

Mapman, contrary to the one before yours, I would call your response an evenhanded approach to the problem we are discussing here. I tend to be very much on Sabai's side in viewing the problem, to whit, to be curious, to experiment, but to discount the hype we are continually being told.
And yes Czarivey, I generally hope to get out of the "audiophile mode" as soon as possible and revert to that happy being, called "music-lover".