[high_priest]

The thing about being or not being able to point out differences in audio quality is that it all boils down to pattern recognition. If you know anything about pattern recognition, you understrnd that you can't have pattern recognition without prior training through provision of tagged samples of such patterns.

If you would give high quality audio experience, to a person that has been listening through 80s general store headphones, to low quality radio rips on magnetic tapes, you might be surprised how few people are going to describe one as "better", without prior description of work and technology required to produce each experience.

And one would be even more surprised by how many people choose the cassette tapes because of nostalgia and a long time satisfying experience.

[keeganpoppen]

isn't perception itself a matter of mere pattern recognition? hearing? the whole point is that you can hear the difference. whether or not it sounds "worse"... is certainly debatable, but is definitely a value judgment. and the burden of proof is definitely on the "it doesn't matter side" to prove that a lower fidelity version is "better" than one truer to the original master.