In Whose Ears Do You Trust Most?

I trust my ears, but only to a point. We all must trust our own ears, yet it is far too easy to lose objectivity—we need external validation from other disinterested ears, and from empirical measurements. Both are important to confirm or disconfirm what we believe we are hearing, and to help us learn the connections between what we hear, what we think, how other perceive it, and how it all correlates with the measurements.

Good thread! I often wondered if my approach was on the right track and not having anyone to critique my system one way or the other. My partner in a new business venture is actually a professional touring musician with the folk group
The Limeliters. We played their new CD on my system and he had the most uncanny response. He said he felt he was both on stage and in the audience at the same time. He thought the sound was the same as the recording session only better. It sured eased my mind!

Cheers
Vernon

I run all my changes by my wife for many reasons. I value and want her opinion ( by me constantly doing this she has seen that she is able to evaluate sound very well and now trusts herself!) Keeping her involved make it easier when I purchase more equipment( I just bought a CD3-MK2 at first she asked me why then when I played "The Rene Miller Band" CD she turned and said it sounded like we were back on the bridge in Paris where we listened to them playing live and bought the CD, then commented how much better this player was and why!!
She keep me honest, she can be merciless as she has no emotional investment.
My friends tend to be PC to not hurt my feelings or perhaps they don't trust themselves completely, offend my hearing or my equipment changes. All I want is a critique!!!
In the end Brf is correct but it's fun to learn how others perceive sound and what they listen to/for etc.....

"She keeps me honest, she can be merciless as she has no emotional investment." Precisely.

As for the Merlins, nothing has lead me to stray from them. Another solution for me has been to use two sets of electronics,Music Reference and Atma-sphere, as they sound different, yet both sound "right" (I know, not logical), and I can't pick one over the other. Though the significant other is very unhappy with the idea that I might ever switch the Atma-sphere.

I trust my ears, but only to a point. We all must trust our own ears, yet it is far too easy to lose objectivity—we need external validation from other disinterested ears, and from empirical measurements.

Well said. Although, I find that disinterested ears don't notice things easily. For example, we were getting out of the car and heading to the wedding reception for a friend. I said to the wife, "how nice they have hired musicians to play at the reception". Since we were in the street, there was no visual way to know that there was live music versus recorded music from inside the recpetion. My wife could not tell from listening and she was curious how I could be sure of myself. I think you can learn these things just as sound engineers are trained - but disinterested ears are very likely to be untrained as these folks just don't bother to listen critically.