More on Developing Your Critical Listening Skills
The Invisible Barrier Theory
Your ability to recognize that one side of a record more often than not will have sonic qualities that are different from the other side of the same disc is limited by an invisible barrier that exists between you, in your role as listener, and you, in your role as judge of the sound.
This barrier goes by another name: “the stereo.“ There really can be no other explanation for it, assuming you have something in the range of normal hearing.
What the stereo is incapable of showing you limits what you can hear, regardless of how much money, time and effort you may have dedicated to your system, or how good a job you think it is doing.
The solution is to get better sound. Then the differences between any two sides of the same record will become as obvious to you as they are to us.
Shootouts are the best way to highlight these often subtle differences, and, as an added benefit, they are also the best way to train your ears to identify them. Once you cross that bridge, there is no going back. ALL your records will start to reveal their true selves, one side at a time.
Further Reading