This thing he talks about with the length of time it takes a cymbal to decay - absurd. How can he possibly determine that the cymbal decay is longer on one of the DACs when - even if it was a real phenomenon - at best the decay might linger for a fraction of a second longer?
So listen on one DAC, get up, unplug the DAC, plug in the other one, listen again. Takes at least a couple of minutes to do. And yet that memory of how long the decay lasted is still so strong that he can be sure it lingers on for less time on one of them? Yeah, of course he can.
Fact is he just thinks he can because claiming to be able to spot things like that is one of the accepted audiophile merit badges.
The reason other people don't hear it is because it's a) not real and b) even if it was it would still be impossible to perceive it. Nothing to do with them 'listening for different things.'
What actually separates golden ears from the rest of us is their heightened ability to kid themselves along. I think it comes from reading too many magazine reviews at an impressionable age.
