As much as I try, I just don't get it........

You can't audition components on Youtube or in dealer showrooms. And it's fun to go crazy at an audio conference having heard that next, great thing that whets your appetite. But you're right--all of our systems are snowflakes, each different. Add the same component to each of our systems and it'll typically be a different experience. So, we buy and we try and sometimes we return. But it's not like we try every amp or interconnect or DAC and then make a choice. Round trip shipping plus 5% restocking fee on thousands of dollars--it adds up. If it were only as easy as going to car dealers and test-driving all the mini SUVs and then making an educated choice. Instead, we research, listen to friends, listen to folks on here and then maybe try one or three amps/speakers/interconnects in our system. No wonder we wonder if cryogenically freezing wire makes a difference. Or maybe cryogenically freezing THAT cable is really what I want. Does it come in silver? I guess it leaves me in a state of not really knowing...I love my system but had I test-driven the Hegel or the Wilson Maxx or the Classe or the Chord, would I have loved them more? I don't know. I never will. If I had millions I might know better but never conclusively. All of our systems are snowflakes and we're in this game because it's fun to research, to tweak, to upgrade, and most of all to listen to the music. I just bought an amazing power amp--it's so much better than my previous amp. I'm truly enjoying it. And I'm also thinking, is there something I'm missing even with this? Probably, and I'm exhausted! :-)  

Get yourself a great headphone and then listen . It makes a world of difference . I got me some planar headphone from HiFiMan and I'm really enjoying the music on YT . I can even hear the difference between the recordings and systems according to the quality .

I have a perspective a lot of folks here don't in that I've been a professional recording engineer for over 30 years.  I listen to sources, I choose their placement in a given room (which often makes a HUGE difference), I choose the microphone that either flatters the sound of the source I'd like to spotlight in the finished recording, or one that is flat and neutral.  I also choose one that has the polar pickup pattern that works best for the source, where it is in the room, the mic's distance from the source, and what else is playing in the room. What does their projection sound like from the microphone's point of view and how does it alter the sound of the source as heard by that microphone?  Sometimes I process that signal on the way in to the recording system, but more often than not I leave those decisions for the mix.

So when I see a Youtube video shot on a phone or a camcorder with ultra-cheap electret condenser mics and a ton of onboard processing with auto gain and limiting built in, moving around a room picking up the sound of a loudspeaker from a distance where room reflections become a critical component of the sound, I know only that I am *not* hearing anything more than a lousy recording, vaguely evocative of how the speaker sounds in that locations through those crappy mics.  And then it goes through the camera's codec and Youtube's codec afterward.  Then I listen back through the coloration of *my* speakers.  By the time you hear a recording of a component or loudspeaker on Youtube, all that's really left to judge critically is how it looks,  which seems to be how many audiophiles tend to listen anyway- with their eyes.

Nothing about youtube, but about the above statement. On two occassions, at Harman store when asking to hear different Revel speakers, the source was.......mp3s from a Samsung phone connected via 3.5mm headphone output.

As long as the other speakers you're comparing use a similar source you have a baseline.  There is zero baseline on Youtube videos.  It's impossible to tell if the person who shot the video was using the ultra cheap microphone built into their camera or the one in their phone.  It is ridiculous on its face.  But then so much of this hobby is. 

What do you think of the *comparative* nature of this?
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K0YkKlEMe8w