In Whose Ears Do You Trust Most?

I trust my own and completely dis-trust anyone with the title "salesman".

My own.

I think no matter how much convincingly you say 'my system' is perfect, but in your heart of hearts you always know where and how big or little faults are (as compared to live music)after you have acquired extesive experience.
There always will be.

French_fries, I was driven to tears on a regular basis while listening to my old Yamaha DSP system hooked up to Cervin Vega AT-15's (early 90'S)

I trust my body, not just my ears. If the feet are tapping, butt is shaking, and head is bobbing all is well. My ears alone are susceptible to sound effects and all sorts of musically irrelevant stuff that never fool the rest of me.

The music travels from YOUR EARS through a passage called
emotion to a place in your heart.
Trust your own ears to get you to that place

Thinking about this a bit more, I don't tend to doubt what I am hearing (for the most part) and describing it. I think I'm pretty good at that (my weakness is tweaks where for the most part I can't hear any differences). I feel less comfortable with the issue of proclaiming one piece of gear as "better" than another, assuming equipment of similar "quality" - I'm not talking about gross differences between mediocre and excellent gear. But when comparing the good stuff, I can hear differences, but find it hard to say which is better, as it always seems to be tradeoffs in one area of perfomance or another - and in no case does reproduce music sound like live, unamplified music - not very close IMHO. When asked to compare, I feel most comfortable saying two pieces of equipment (Music Reference versus Atma-sphere for example) are both very good, portray music differently and it is a matter of taste. I ask for other opinions of "disinterested" folks that know and love music since I feel I get a less analytical assessment (my own) and a more unbiased, natural reaction to the musical event coming through the gear.