this post was submitted on 14 Feb 2026
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Even more than the actual contact with the media, the entire system breaks down at the ears. If your ears aren't well-trained, then you don't even know what to listen for. You might think loud bass is good, or booming drums, and never notice that you can't hear any mids.
So in a blind test like this, some people just might prefer a sound that this experiment has little impact on, so they wouldn't be able to notice any differences.
A well-trained ear might be able to detect differences between them, but still not have a real preference. Besides being able to hear all the different frequencies, you have to know what the instruments sound like in real life to know if those frequencies are reproducing accurately. Again, if you don't what it's supposed to sound like, you really don't know if ANY change in components makes a positive or negative difference in the natural sound, you only know the difference relative to your personal preference.
TL;DR: This "experiment" doesn't prove anything. It's just funny.
Yes, so my well-trained ears prefer noisy sound, something like 48kb mp3s I downloaded from the web in my childhood (born 1996). Because that's less likely to cause migraine through them than a good record with some annoying sounds in it, preserved by a more precise lossy encoding. And things you want to hear are kept well enough even by 48kbit mp3s.
And this surprisingly keeps with analog things, like headphones and speakers. I prefer something cheap and noisy that makes sounds softer to something quality and with crisp sound, but somehow too crisp.
And I do have good ears, I can hear a lot of things, a cat walking on a neighboring plot in countryside during wind, things like that. Hence the migraines.
Interesting, do you know where I can buy a set of trained ears? - Audiophiles, probably.
Some of it is genetic, but a lot of it is years of training in hearing and teasing out all the frequencies.
I spent years in the audiophile record business back in the transition days from analogue LPs to digital CDs, and spent a LOT of time with beyond top-of-the-line audio gear, including high end stuff that wasn't even on the consumer market.
My ears got trained from many years in bands and orchestras, then recording sessions, then hearing the final recordings on CD, as well as thousands of other recordings, and many live performances by some of the greatest orchestras in the world. I know what it is supposed to sound like at every stage of the process.
Bottom line, cables aren't going to be a major issue. Guarantee you've got at least 10 other variables making a bigger difference, and most of them can't even be fixed.