Over time I went from analysis and upgrade to just listening and enjoying the music. Then after five or ten years, something... available funds / advances in technology... read an article, I upgrade something. This then throws the rest of my system into imbalance (the new component is much better than the remaining)... so I go through an upgrade cycle. I try and make them short, but with break in periods, research, sometimes funds, they can take a year. But I was a scientist... so I like analysis and success at zeroing in on the perfect sound. Then, I sit back and really forget about the sound.
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In fact, over the years I have learned... provided there are not fundamental problems with the sound, the best way to determine the character of the sound and if I like it, is to not analyze / critically listen but just to listen to music for a couple of weeks. The overall character becomes appearent with a real draw to the system, or not. Your subconscious works on the overall impact and emotional connection with the music (rhythm and pace) instead of really irrelevant stuff like can I hear the musician move his foot. My systems have gotten much better when I left that detail and really obvious stuff behind and experienced the music in its totality.
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This approach took me from ribbon speakers and massively powerful amps to all Audio Research components and Sonus Faber Amati Traditional speakers. My systems are now orders of magnitude more satisfying than when I analyzed the microdetails.
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In fact, over the years I have learned... provided there are not fundamental problems with the sound, the best way to determine the character of the sound and if I like it, is to not analyze / critically listen but just to listen to music for a couple of weeks. The overall character becomes appearent with a real draw to the system, or not. Your subconscious works on the overall impact and emotional connection with the music (rhythm and pace) instead of really irrelevant stuff like can I hear the musician move his foot. My systems have gotten much better when I left that detail and really obvious stuff behind and experienced the music in its totality.
.
This approach took me from ribbon speakers and massively powerful amps to all Audio Research components and Sonus Faber Amati Traditional speakers. My systems are now orders of magnitude more satisfying than when I analyzed the microdetails.