Comparing systems through phone recordings

Yes well that one's a lot harder. The thing of it is, its all about comparison. Even in our own rooms with our own systems we can't meaningfully compare if we change several things at once

Yes that is true of course and we are in agreement, the intention is not to AB systems remotely or audition a system that way (sharpen the pitchforks !!)
Just getting a glimpse of the sonics or comparing lightly to a similar system.

Its just never forget the first commandment of comparing: thou shalt not change more than one thing at a time.

I have sinned, I have broken that commandment several times, like a friend of mine told me once I did several changes "Luis, you are banned from the audiophile club membership this month, what were you thinking"But yeah if you are serious you should change things one at a time and possibly let these settled for some time before changing anything else.

Yesterday I watched OCD hifi guys latest video posted . It was comparing a song from his cd player ,

Mike has a very good rig but he has done AB comparison polls on his YouTube channel and people have posted results, he commented on the OP exact opinion how bizarre you could get an idea of good sonics on phone recordings, now he is using I think a more sophisticated recorder not just the a phone.

On the plus side: its free and easy to do, and even if it does not come close to the direct listening experience (and cannot be used for strict A/B comparison), it can give a rough idea of the sonic signature of each system. On the minus side - all the things mentioned above.
Two dilemmas: 1) I can get better recordings using Rode mics into a Steinberg UR22. However, then I would not follow the mobile "standard", it would depend on the others using the same or a very similar recording setup.
2) Comparing system A and B by playing the B recording through A is obviously not ideal, since the B sound will be ’tainted’ by the A sound. In fact its amazing that the differences are notable at all. Yet I hear them. My friend with the B system has much more costly speaker drivers than I have, and I can hear it, especially in the treble. I think this is due to the fact that the sound changes in the mid region, which the mobile pics up, although it cannot fully capture low bass or high treble. In order to avoid the two-in-one problem I've used another system C to test A and B recordings. C is a small (OTL + single driver speakers) home office system. In practice, I hear much the same differences between A and B whether I play them on system C or A (except for bass, which is limited on C). 

One more minus: on some phones, including my p30pro, the sound is better in video than in sound-only recordings. No idea why, but this phone is extremely focused on visual/camera performance, while the sound is almost like an afterthought (e g it only records in mono). I see that the video recordings can be 100mb or so for a couple of minutes, while the sound-only is 1 or 2mb. So, clearly, a much lower level sound format. Further, converting the large mp4 video file into a sound-only file (as lossless as possible) is a problem I haven’t solved yet.

When I do the Teleportation Tweak over the phone 📱I can hear the sound change even as I’m in the middle of doing it, even over a couple satellite 🛰 hops, as long as the customer has the system on at the time, which actually isn’t a requirement. More of a curiosity thing. Yes, I realize one could argue it’s the performance of the phones that’s improving.