Due to the opening gambit being an open invitation to ‘find an aspect of the post one may wish to engage with…’ ; hard NOT to be able to contribute to this thread and be, arguably, “on topic”…
Lots of references to ‘air’ (around instruments) and noticing more detail (cymbals ARE a great frequency zone to pick differences has oft been my experience,… but as is familiarity with the music played…): for me - I know I would want a training track (or three) to learn a system if I was to be of ANY use picking ‘which is better’ when listening to ‘test samples’; this one single fact leaves me dumbfounded as to how MOST ‘listening tests’ have been setup (setup to fail).
Firstly is the fact that most simply do not know which is the better version of a playback (in the first place).
Given most will pick louder as better, in majority of the MP3 vs lossless comparisons, NO DOUBT generates much spuria in the tally of listeners experience… (and nullifies potential findings due to statistical averaging; some listeners DO actually pick easily the traits that are different but have their significance lost due to many people voting the EXACT OPPOSITE, due to a lack of knowing which is better in the first place).
Generally speaking, as someone who lived through digital in the eighties and nineties and the introduction of compressed file formats (and their evolution), loved Minidisc, and has trained ears over the decades to hear very subtle differences in kit- I do find this aspect of ‘audiophile’ a part of my personality.
I have played with so much kit over the decades and been scientific in my ‘testing’ of it vs a range of kit; this is ‘a part of the hobby’; but has nothing to do with me enjoying music… which is when I AM NOT doing setup and compare work and am simply enjoying the music (the majority of what I do…)
but I do take the work side seriously; mostly just so as I can make calculated decisions with regards to what kit to keep. (and ‘value for money’ factor etc)
when playing with the start of ‘hi res’ formats coming to the consumer market (some DVDs and HDCD), the ‘air’ was the obvious tell that anyone could ‘see’ / describe when experiencing the upgrade.
Instruments had a better sense of being in real space.
(certainly justified the upgrades)
Of course there are many benefits and tonality and detail and other microdetails turn up… (I don’t care about extending the dynamic range, and still think 20bit HDCD was the best thing to ever happen for consumer audio until Microsoft buried it)
The truth I have come to see after decades of playing with many different ‘tiers’ of equipment is that Dolby Digital, as a format, played on top tier kit, sounds way better than CD quality on ‘budget fi’.
On cheap kit, the difference that hi res brings can make the kit seem much better, but is often a factor of a few things, no doubt that the cheap DAC chips favour whatever benefits ALL THE EXTRA DATA BRINGS, vs having to do a great job recreating something amazing from ‘less’.
so, middle of the road kit… (say ‘tier 3’ hifi of which few ever consider or buy- the ‘high end stuff actually on the floor in dedicated audio stores’) actually does amazing with CD quality and, whilst it will let higher resolution music ‘shine more’, the differences are less needed/ less ‘night/day’ as both extremes of equipment in the market (really cheap and really expensive) will make use of.
On the best kit- you want to feed ‘the best recordings’ (too much of a fall from grace when stiffling the system with mediocre media), and on the most budget stuff, a match up of the right hi res format might actually equal a sound like anyone in the 1990s got from CDs…
Too many variables in the equation to make broad or generalised statements… and those who want to argue will focus on any minute part and then argue ad nauseum that most who have experienced ‘esoteric’ differences (ie digital cables mattering to sound quality) simply give up engaging with muppets who 'say they want to learn/‘know’, but are more invested in guarding their “huge blinkers”.
Truth is, no doubt, that most who are happy with their systems are simply enjoying using them and seldom need to engage in forums with others on principles that are ‘true to them’ and voodoo to 99% of forum pundits in mainstream ‘hifi’ hangouts.
Statistically too much skewing towards the average joe for anything to do with ‘high end sound’ to actually be represented ‘fairly’ in so called blind tests etc.
Ear training is a huge part of this.
If I hadn’t spent so much of my life training myself ‘what to listen for’, and established decades ago some test tracks I could learn like the back of my hand, and ‘know’… I wouldn’t have developed the reference points and built up a catalogue in my head of changes and how much an aspect of sound is worth (or historically was worth)…
I know the value of aspects of sound change, to me, based on many decades of trialing a tonne of kit. (and having had reference top tier systems, albeit ‘dated’)
Now my ‘race to the middle’ /mid-fi sound ‘on a budget’ is something I have DOWN.
if a friend came to me with a $2K-10k budget I could help them put together a serious sound quality that would meet their needs and be vastly better value than walking in blind to a hifi store and buying ‘new off the shelf’.
Fair; I don’t find value in most of the mainstream junk being sold today, and have witnessed first hand what has happened to hifi through the ages after any ‘world financial crisis’.
Of course there is a range of arguments for why ‘better value for money’ can be found in second hand parts, and like the consensus I see across a few threads here (and elsewhere)- I am a big fan of buying new when there is a lot of mechanical part involved.
but I am moving off topic and talking hifi theories here…
regarding sound quality- sure, ‘ear training’ and ‘a good reference’ are important.
is it essential to enjoy music? - not at all… I enjoy ‘for radio’ tracks jamming through a mono bluetooth speaker if that is all that is available. Probably wouldn’t critical listen to it though… but I could enjoy recalling the same song as heard on nicer setups… a reference to good book or like a trailer to a favourite movie that allows oneself to be whisked away in ones mind to a memory of ‘a better time’ enjoying said experience (with loved ones/‘on a better system’ etc)…
for me,… CD quality is as much as I NEED as I certailly do NOT own a setup that can extract everything from even that format… I do enjoy the hi res files though, and it is much easier to ‘turn them up’ and bounce along…