Agree with "You like the music" is the most important thing.
But I don't count on "blind test" at all. That's people try to convince others showing no bias to certain brands. But "blind test" at home make no sense to me, also an EE engineer.
We use our ears to hear and enjoy the music, it is "blind" anyway. Switching things without seeing it is sometime more a "brain game" than a real test. Then you get nervous, then you fatigue earlier, then you can't relax to tell how much you enjoy that music or not. Sometimes difference comes from not enough warming up or no difference from fatigue.
For me, I sit down for two hours for one component and go for the next one. If I am tired, will not continue and wait for next time. Why? my amp's take ~1 hour to get its
peak performance.
Since you are an engineer too, recommend you to read articles from real engineers, who really design a tube or ss amp. There are some "techinical" reasons why tube sounds different from ss. High power supply voltage, feedback, transformer output, ....
I found some good articles in old TAS, sorry don't remember which issues.
To put this in short, everything is in nonlinear. Especially when you drive your speaker loud, your amp+speaker are working in a large signal (& nonlinear) region. If you only test your amp in small signial test on spectrum analyzer, you can't get the whole picture of real situation during listening.
Unfortunately, nonlinear characterization is difficult and still needs young scientiest like you to work on it.
When you put on a dummy load to your cheap receiver and measure the spectrum, you get quite nice number out of it.
Even a low end receiver gives a better spec than lots of high end tube gear, especially analog amp turntable....
But remember, your speaker is a driver+crossover, and that is nowhere close to a dummy resistor load for tests.
A nice small sigal performance does not guarantee a nicer performance when you put it into real world, i.e. large signal and nonlinear world.
I am not saying those spec number are useless, just point out it might be misleading sometimes.
On the other end, digital equippment's spec is usually more revealing what it can do.
A 24 bit processer is better than 20 bit one with similar CKT.
Again "trust your ears"!!!
But I don't count on "blind test" at all. That's people try to convince others showing no bias to certain brands. But "blind test" at home make no sense to me, also an EE engineer.
We use our ears to hear and enjoy the music, it is "blind" anyway. Switching things without seeing it is sometime more a "brain game" than a real test. Then you get nervous, then you fatigue earlier, then you can't relax to tell how much you enjoy that music or not. Sometimes difference comes from not enough warming up or no difference from fatigue.
For me, I sit down for two hours for one component and go for the next one. If I am tired, will not continue and wait for next time. Why? my amp's take ~1 hour to get its
peak performance.
Since you are an engineer too, recommend you to read articles from real engineers, who really design a tube or ss amp. There are some "techinical" reasons why tube sounds different from ss. High power supply voltage, feedback, transformer output, ....
I found some good articles in old TAS, sorry don't remember which issues.
To put this in short, everything is in nonlinear. Especially when you drive your speaker loud, your amp+speaker are working in a large signal (& nonlinear) region. If you only test your amp in small signial test on spectrum analyzer, you can't get the whole picture of real situation during listening.
Unfortunately, nonlinear characterization is difficult and still needs young scientiest like you to work on it.
When you put on a dummy load to your cheap receiver and measure the spectrum, you get quite nice number out of it.
Even a low end receiver gives a better spec than lots of high end tube gear, especially analog amp turntable....
But remember, your speaker is a driver+crossover, and that is nowhere close to a dummy resistor load for tests.
A nice small sigal performance does not guarantee a nicer performance when you put it into real world, i.e. large signal and nonlinear world.
I am not saying those spec number are useless, just point out it might be misleading sometimes.
On the other end, digital equippment's spec is usually more revealing what it can do.
A 24 bit processer is better than 20 bit one with similar CKT.
Again "trust your ears"!!!