How competitive are you with your system?

@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.

@devinplombier You should NOT do what you did. By playing the recording back through your system you are doubling up on the room contributions which will have constructive and destructive interference. You need to listen to the recording either in near-field or over headphones, not recommended. Your process of playback used for comparison is very flawed so I’m not surprised at all by the discrepancies between the native playback and recording playback through the same system, and listened to at the listening position. You should listen to the recording in near-field preferably than over headphones because by listening to it near-field you will incorporate the Head-Related Transfer Function (HRTF). When you listen with headphones you skip/omit the HRTF and that will make the audio recording sound different, than what you would hear if you were sitting in the room at the listening chair/position.

To put yourself in the listening position as heard if you were there then listing to the recording in near-field is the only method.