I agree with Drubin, Johnnantais's post is excellent, as is Mattybumpkin's. I've never been bothered by an upgrade to my system where I've had the piece in my system for an extended audition, which is almost all pieces these days (even my upgrade of my Audio Logic came with a promise from Jerry Ozment to undo the upgrade if I didn't like it). I don't really listen critically after the first hour of trying to hear what the objective differences are--after that, I just sit back and see how the music moves me for the next few days, listening to pieces of music that I like. I then reinsert the piece I'm thinking of replacing and see if I still like the upgrade better. Not an exact science, but it seems to work well--my Jadis JP80 withstood many assaults from objectively "better" preamps for years via this method. There is a fine line between revealing more information and losing the musical enjoyment; you can have them both, but there are not that many products out there that can perform this balancing act well.
What steps forward were actually steps backward?
I'm always fascinated to read about how many "upgrades" were improvements, and that very few were actually disappointing and could be considered a "downgrade". Are we all so knowledgeable and incisive that all our hardware purchases are always for the better?
Who is willing to admit that their "upgrade" was a "downgrade"?
Who is willing to admit that their "upgrade" was a "downgrade"?