I'm with Bjp, sort of: If you have to squint to see it (or rather, hear it), don't pay for it. Because of the psychological factors people have mentioned, to say nothing of the difficulty of doing A/Bs where everything else is constant, I have near zero confidence in my judgment when the differences are less than pretty dramatic. I also find it useful to do comparisons with a non-audiophile, be they male or female, since they may be less motivated to detect "small but significant" differences that may not really be there.
No doubt, others are more discerning, and they may reliably make small magnitude discriminations -- and be willing to pay for them!
John
No doubt, others are more discerning, and they may reliably make small magnitude discriminations -- and be willing to pay for them!
John