I actually have a favor to ask of some of the more thoughtful and experienced Watercoolers. I mentioned a bit ago that I’m trying to improve my critical listening, and reviewing skills (not to be a reviewer, THAT seems like so much work, this is just for my own personal development in my audiophile journey).
To that end, I’d LOVE to hear about some of your critical listening methodologies and routines.
Respectfully in advance, I’m not interested in “listen more” responses, that won’t be helpful because that’s a given.
To give an example, if you’re listening to evaluate FR, are you listening three or four times to the same tune to evaluate bass vs sub-bass, or do you gather that on one or two passes? What style of note-taking do you do, detailed and thorough, or just a couple of words? Do you find you need to use a different process when comparing DAP vs IEMs vs cables? What do you do to shift from the “listening” to the “writing”? Specifically wondering about those who write such nuanced and detailed (and extremely helpful) recaps that dissect the most intricate aspects of the gear we love.
I could go on with the questions, but I’m genuinely curious about all of this, and am surprised it’s a rarely discussed in detail aspect of the reviewing process here, or anywhere on the interwebs, actually.
I could be wrong, and this could be a bit presumptuous of me to say it, but my sense is there would be many, many forum readers that would be interested about this subject.