At this late date doubts about the necessity of closely controlled blind listening tests for judging audio equipment can't be taken seriously. It's been too well established that human beings can't "Just trust their ears" when their brains keep getting in the way and, for example, imagining that a component which costs ten times as much just has to be better. Correlations between price and sound quality even in items where there actually are audible differences, i.e. speakers, are quite low, although they're not zero.

Dr. Toole has discussed this at length in his book "Sound Reproduction", but a convenient on-line summary of some of the findings is provided by Dr. Olive in "The Dishonesty of Sighted Listening Tests" . Major differences in sound judgments were greatly narrowed and in one case reversed when the blind comparisons began. The significance of changes in speaker positions was also clearly demonstrated.

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Enjoy the music, not the equipment.