I have been trying to nail down a few IEMs I have been using for some time now. It turns out, that is way harder than expected.
State of consciousness changes A LOT even from one moment to another. And with that treble gets less or more annoying, you might notice more or less detail with listening, even your spatial awareness could change. Something as little as the endogenous melatonin release that puts you to sleep changes your consciousness so much you will eat up any music on any equipment before you go to sleep.
It is kind of like parking the spaceship to the spinning spacestation in Interstellar. You are actively A/B-ing your equipment and there is atleast another attribute that is unexpectedly varying while you do so.
With all that in mind, let me state this:
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Reviews that are about “subjective experience” are hectic because they rely on something that cant be so easily determined.
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Reviews that are about “measurements” are hectic because their subjective experience is in a blindspot.
Tl;Dr.: Actually zeroing in on a product will inevitably be an arduous process for both the prudent reviewer and the wary buyer. There is no way around it.
I’ve heard as much but personally haven’t found the variation to be that large personally, things usually sound about how I remember them, and how I want. Which I’m pretty thankful for. My ears aren’t really that great though so that probably plays a part, as well as the poor audio memory of humans— maybe it does happen, but I more or less remember it always sounding like this, so I never notice. I have tried to be conscious of this but it’s never worked.
My purchase methodology works around this anyway, though inadvertently. I tend to A/B over multiple days. Much harder if you’re not near any audio stores though