Hello Curtis,
I feel I should weigh in here because I did do many years of truly scientifically controlled double-blind listening in professional surroundings at Canada's National Research Council in Ottawa, Canada, where over the course of 13 years I reviewed (with colleagues) various speakers for test reports published in Sound&Vision magazine Canada. These sessions were supervised and designed by Dr. Floyd Toole, a scientist and psycoacoustician (also an audiophile) who, over the course of 25 years running the Acoustics division at the NRC, explored exactly how subjectivity in listening tests influences our conclusions--and how these relate to the frequency response measurements taken in an anechoic chamber at some 220 positions in a sphere around the speaker.
Here are some controls that must be in place if you are to reach anything other than anecdotal conclusions that have no scientific validity.
You must conceal the brand, the price, and the physical details of the speakers from the listeners with a visually opaque and acoustically transparent curtain. If you don't, listeners' preconceived expectations will hopelessly bias the results.
The speakers should be listened to in mono first, to avoid small variations cause by placement/room effects of stereo listening. The switching between speaker brands must be instantaneous, and volume levels must be adjusted to within 1/10 of a dB. If not, listeners will always perceive the louder speaker as "better," or give it a higher ranking even if it doesn't subjectively sound any louder. The switching should be done by a person with no interest in the test outcome, who is unrelated to any of the listeners. The technician should collect the scoring sheets and keep track of the data. No discussion during or between listening sessions is allowed..
Trying to assess more than four different speakers accurately is impossible in less than several days of concentrated sessions of about 20 to 25 minutes each, followed by a break, for 6 to 8 hours per day. For greater numbers of speakers, I used to spend 3 or 4 days of full 8-hour sessions.
Stereo listening does not change the ranking order of speaker preferences. Stereo is a flattering effect, and scores will be higher, but the order of preferences does not change. Mono testing enables rapid pinpointing of speaker distortion and colorations. A wide variety of listening material--pop, jazz, classical and rock--should be sought out and tested as to its ability to distinguish good from bad speakers. Many electric rock selections are not useful in this regard.
You must exchange and rotate speaker positions and listening seats to randomize out the effects of the room. If not, many of your judgements will be a product of a given speaker's position in that particular room, rather than intrinsic qualities or liabilities of the speaker. I cannot emphasize enough how important this is. Just a difference of one or two feet in the placement of two different speakers will cause a bigger change in the scores than differences in the actual speakers themselves! What you end up reviewing are the acoustic properties of the room, rather than the speakers!
From what I've read, few if any of these controls were observed or even possible in your admittedly amateur assessments. Thus your conclusions are really casual anecdotal opinions--I'm sure it was pleasant, but it's unwise to make any final conclusions about the inherent virtues or limitations of any of the products under review.
Regards,
