Recently, I got new speakers and when I hooked them up, a/b tested against my old speakers, and heard tighter, punchier, deeper bass, more clarity and detail, I confidently told myself that the new thing is better, but over time I noticed that I was just not listening to music that much. Listening to my favorite albums or checking out a new one for the first time used to hold my attention, but now after a few songs, I would drift off down a YouTube rabbit hole and can’t get through an entire album. I put my old (apparently inferior) speakers back and I suddenly can’t get enough music.
I’m not going to go into over-analyzing those particular speakers, because I have had the same thing happen with headphones and amps as well. I think my takeaway here Is that in my time watching reviews and trying to judge what good sound is, I have inadvertently trained my self to look for certain characteristics of sound quality that aren’t actually what I enjoy the most… so how do you know what it is about sound quality actually keeps you listening as opposed to what checks the boxes you’ve created to distinguish “good” audio quality.
I think what it comes down to we like gear and tinkering with audio systems, and what changes we can make to bring out different sounds in our music. Then, once we have lived with particular arrangement, we get to change something and listen to our music all over again, and determine which songs were enhanced by the change and which song were not. That’s my approach at least.