I totally appreciate the effort for comparison but:
I would argue that for comparisons, it would be better for no alterations to be made, as these alter the sound and affect the comparison.
Everyone argues for different things in comparisons, and everyone has been arguing and bagging on comparisons for 15+ years on ts.com. Feel free to do your own comparisons, or at least to pay more attention to the postings on them and ignore them if they don't meet your standards.
Sound like I'm annoyed, I am. There are lots of tradeoffs and choices, and different people come to different conclusions. I've done far more comps than most here on ts.com and they take effort -- many times I've been soldering up breakout cables and borrowing equipment to get them done, then putting together files, uploading them, etc. Always end up the same way on ts.com with someone shitting on them because they would do it different.