I don't believe in golden ears. I've worked with the highly trained ears types, and they often miss the music. I just believe in closed mined and open minded. People who can repeat the test, and not know they will not hear anything before they start, because they are convinced there can be no difference.
I really wish there were better discussions in sound science.
Shall I type something incorrectly to make you feel better?
There is no such thing as golden ears. However, there is experiences, and familiarity. It is human nature.
a person who cook rice with the same setup to B person with the differences that A is 1 year experience and B is 10 years. The B person always do it cleaner, faster, and have better outcome even when he doesn't pay attentions.
The same for basket ball player. Yet, there are gift with birth and muscles arrangements...etc...let's say both player with the same built. A person who practice shooting ball every day for 8 hours will always do better than a person who only practice for 10 minutes a day
Same thing for martial artist, everyone is capable of doing kungfu and martial arts...but only the one who practice everyday can do better...ultimately the person who not only practice, but battle in real life and death situations over and over would do much much better.....
You will find this human nature every where...because it is nature.
Should I say more ?
Ears and music is the same. A person who listen to the same song over 10 years, and he would be able to tell every chances from each setup to another. When a person who only listen to that very same song only listen to it recently, he wouldn't be able to tell.
In the end, yes, there are changes and improvements, and those very trained people are so dedicated to their hobby and job, they are trade secret for manufacturers. They would neve disclose their hearing and observations to anyone else beside their employers. Engineers use their finding and together with research and equipment, goals, etc...etc...to engineer new amplifier, headphones, players, etc...etc.
If there is no perceivable changes, we will only have 1 headphones, 1 player, 1 smartphone, and one of everything....could you hear and observe it yourself ? Depend, do you know how ? If you don't, then go read review on people who can.
Again, the ability to observe and hear the changes are not a gift, it is a curse. Hardcore enthusiasm tend to be able to tell, because they only collect so much song tracks, then listen to it for hours everyday....for years....years....and years...this result in "upgradatis". They want to upgrade to break away from the same thing they hear for years....they don't want to move on from their library, so they move on by buying new gears and hear the changes...including cables, connectors, plugs....etc....etc.
I have some flac tunes, and some 320kbps (both from Bandcamp), and can't really tell the difference... Maybe it will change when I buy a phone with proper audio :-D
