Murph,
Nice analogy to the eyes adjusting to light. Certainly in music reproduction there is an accommodation that takes place with your ears and brain that let you "hear through" the limitations of the system (car, boat, portable, old recordings) or of the source recording to the great music or singers. I spent a number of weeks living on my sailboat this summer--it has a decent Alpine marine system, stereo, two 8-inch coaxial speakers in the cabin and two in the cockpit. I listened to a bunch of CDs and got used to it, then after a week or so, I went over to Axiom to do a bunch of listening tests, bringing along the same CDs I'd had on the boat.
I was initially floored during the first double-blind test--I recall thinking I can hardly believe that speakers are capable of this sound quality compared to what I'd been used to on the sailboat. Yet I'd accommodated the sound on the boat and enjoyed lots of music. But hearing the Axioms (I think they were M22s in the first set of tests) was like raising a veil or opening a screen door, to carry through the visual analogy.
It's really interesting how the brain and hearing system adjust and filter out the annoying stuff--lack of fidelity, distortion artifacts, etc-- to let you get off on the good music.
Regards,
Alan
