What's your process for comparing new gear, cables, etc.?

Okay so I don't know what to do in your case. I never met anyone with zero memory before. How you even remember you have a stereo is beyond me. Probably you have memory and the problem is you remember what someone told you about not having a memory replace your personal everyday experience of actually having a memory. Happens all the time. To audiophiles. No one else ever has this problem. Trust me. No don't take my word for it. Ask any random person- can you remember the sound of your mother's voice? Answer will be yes. People do have auditory memory. Fantastic long term auditory memory.

All you need to do is learn how to use it. In just the last week I must have written a thousand words on exercises you can do to improve your listening skills. It takes work. It takes effort. It does not happen overnight. But it can be learned. In time a lot of the nonsense you believe now you will come to understand is utter and complete nonsense.

But in the beginning it might help to eliminate a few variables and standardize a few things. So go ahead and keep the volume the same and play the same boring tracks over and over again if you think that helps.

What really helps is to only change one thing at a time. If you are comparing cables then swap out only the cables. If you are comparing amps swap only the amps. That means if you are using a power cord, cones, fuse, etc (like you should be) then you move all that stuff over to the comparison piece. Otherwise its not a valid fair comparison. Got it? One thing.

That's it. That's the whole enchilada. Then you just listen. Everything goes through a settling in process. Even a used cable when you first get it has been bent and twisted and unused for many hours and will take some time to settle in. How much time? Listen. When it stops changing its settled in.

When you are a good listener you will know a long time before that. Give it a good year or three. You will get there.

Listening covers a wide range of subjects and reasons. The only thing wider is the range of sonic characteristics we are able to hear. This goes well beyond easily measured things like the volume and frequency response so many obsess over, and into things like imaging, depth, focus, air, inner detail, on and on. The list is endless.

The biggest stumbling block I have seen, and it is prevalent, so depressingly prevalent, is the compulsion to doubt and second guess and attempt to explain away things you do in fact hear.

When I first started trying to listen for some of these things it was extremely frustrating. In hindsight the two things that held me back the most were the lack of vocabulary, the ability to understand and put into words the differences I was in fact hearing, and this false advice about the necessity of precisely matching everything. 

So what would happen, and this happened over and over again, I would go to some store and compare CDP or whatever and find one I thought sounded better. I was sure it sounded better, just not in any way I could put into words. So I would get my wife to come and listen. And always, every single time, she would indeed have the same preference.

And no, for you guys who think you're so smart, I know all the stories, every single one of them. More than you I bet. So I was careful to not say anything to let on which one I liked. Just I think there's a difference but I can't believe it and want to be sure so would you mind? And every time she would say well I like this one. Why? It sounds more expensive. More, quality. That's it. We knew. We heard it. We agreed. We just had no way of putting it into words.

One of the things I always truly believed even after a lot of other "common wisdom" had been proven false, was you had to listen at a certain volume level. 

Then one day it dawned on me. The one guy who had taught me the most, the best listener I ever came across, who always had the best components and knew every detail of how they sounded, Stewart Marcantoni, this guy never once listened above probably about 85 dB. I would always have to turn it up. When he came over I would always respect this and play a little lower volume for him than anyone else. 

I thought for a long time he was just protecting his ears. More and more it bugged me, how he is able to hear so much detail so well even at such a low volume. Until one day I asked and he told me that's part of it, saving his ears, but really you do not need to listen so loud to hear just fine. Around that same time I learned you do not even need to play the same recording over and over again. Or even twice. When you know the system and are a good enough listener none of this is necessary.

People find it good sport to insult and make fun of me. I am fair game. Everyone else can make fun of my system. I can't do the same. I get that. Doesn't change the fact the stories are true. That guy at CES, he really did hear a system for the first time and he really could tell on one hearing what was wrong and they really did fix it. 

Didn't need no matched volume. Didn't even need no A/B. For sure did not need any double-blind. All he needed was his ears. And listening skills developed to a sublime degree from decades of practice.

Anyone serious about learning, this is how you go about it. You can start with whatever crutches you need. Match volume. Play the same tracks until you never want to hear them again. Whatever floats your boat. Just don't come around here telling me its some kind of requirement. Its not. Its just some mental roadblocks you put in your own way. You put them there. You can remove them. Or not. Just remember they are your roadblocks. Not mine.

If you say so. I play music. I listen. I have no problem hearing, differentiating between different components, and certainly no problem remembering. I found the story of not being able to remember sounds to be totally false. It holds a lot of guys back, maybe more than anything else. Because instead of just getting on with the business of listening and comparing they set up all these unnecessary roadblocks and qualifications. Then on top of that if they do manage to hear something instead of acknowledging it and working off their actual experience they try and disqualify and discount it with even more roadblocks.

So it just seems to me that since this one false premise, no auditory memory, is so demonstrably false and counterproductive and yet pervasive that it deserves to be dealt with decisively and destroyed as fast and well as possible. Sorry if my methods don't meet with your approval. But it is a bad idea, and needs to be put down. One way or another.

Otherwise, what is the point? Why would anyone put any time or energy let alone money into their system? I mean seriously, what is the point? 
To be able to say, "I spent a ton of money on a system that sounds good, or at least I think it does, if only I could remember???"

Sorry clearthink, really, but if you can think of a nice polite way to clearly state this idea is patently false, misleading and actually harmful I would sure like to hear it.