How competitive are you with your system?

@vinylrestingplace There is a huge fallacy with that thinking. The variables between any two systems will NEVER be the same. All the systems that I have here at home are in different rooms and made up of different components. The reason that I’m able to compare them is because the ONLY thing that I care about is the resultant sound at the listening position and that is ALL that I care about and compare. NOTHING else matters to me, the ONLY think that matters and that should be compared is the resultant sound at the listening position. All of those other variables are inconsequential and fully baked into the resultant sound at the listening position. So don’t pay any attention to the room or any other variable, the ONLY thing that matters and that should be judged and compared is the resultant sound at the listening position. The variables will NEVER be all the same but that doesn’t matter as they are incorporated into the resultant sound and that sum of all variable sound is what one hears at the listening position and that resultant sound at the listening position is the only thing that should be judged and compared between systems.

@daveyf The audio recordings embedded in the videos should be playback and listen to in near-field. When you playback the audio recordings embedded in videos in near-field, it allows you listen to and hear what the microphone (s) captured at the listening position. That is key, to use the same playback chain and to playback in near-field to make the comparisons.

Why don’t you post that audio recording of Miles Davis playing on your system that you received complements on?

Has anybody been able to post a video directly from their phone? 

@ronboco If you are able to host, give the public access to your server, then you can post the native recording from your phone. The reason people use YouTube is for 1) security reasons as you are not giving strangers access to your server and 2) because if the recordings being compared go through the same YouTube process then you are putting them on an even playing field.

@carlos269 

No one in their right mind disputes that sound can be accurately recorded in one's listening room. But even someone such as myself who has no recording experience comprehends that how it is recorded makes a very significant difference.

Someone - maybe it was you - made the argument that a mere smartphone is all that's needed to produce a good-enough quality recording.

My experience was this: with my smartphone, I recorded my system playing a piece I am well familiar with. Then I streamed my phone recording to the system that played it while I recorded it. Therefore, the original FLAC file, and the recording made with my phone were heard on the exact same system within seconds of one another.

The difference was striking. The phone recording had less than half the SPL, no bass, severely rolled off highs, and no soundstage whatsoever. FM radio vs AM radio.

My point is that evaluating system SQ via YouTube videos is inherently fraught, for we don't know how the sound was recorded and, more importantly, processed, in the first place. I have no doubt that a good sound engineer could make a middling system sound better on YouTube than that poor guy's with the model 911 hanging from the wall of his room.