Quote:
Originally Posted by
Evshrug 
^ I have a friend, who I've known since 3rd Grade, who graduated with a BA degree in musical education about two years ago, who last time I saw him was swearing by the pair of beats he recently got as the best headphones ever. Sadly, I think he is more interested in working on music than enjoying music
It's paradoxical, but the two things don't always (or often, in my experience) go together. Musical talent and experience have nothing to do with hearing acuity (i.e. Beethoven wrote some of his best music while deaf) or a sense for good sound. You need only look at the loudness wars to see this. If all musicians could judge good audio quality, they'd be appalled at what engineers and labels are doing to their music, and the more technically-minded could in fact learn how to record and mix and thus engineer their own tracks. Almost nobody does this. Most of them just sing, play, and/or write and aren't concerned about the rest of the process.
The ability to judge audio quality is a separate thing entirely. I'd love to see some research on the subject, but my feeling is that it has to do with the brain organizing auditory input differently (e.g. more precisely/fine grained, greater attention to detail) than most people, as well as the ability to store a prototype for natural tonal and attack/decay properties. Humans do this in other places (e.g. you know very precisely what a human should look like, and anyone who deviates significantly from that prototype produces a negative reaction). It makes sense that audiophiles' brains could just use these same cognitive abilities for audio.
