Allow me to overstate my case.
Entry level uses cheap parts with lots of magnetically sensitive materials in the electrical signal pathways (pathways of any nature)
Good gear, high end gear, uses non magnetic parts and components, and any plating is done with no ’inter-metallic’ (usually nickel). Materials chosen for their low distortion of transient function and flow.
And then the system/device/part/component is re adjusted to be dynamic and neutral.
The cheap stuff screams like a banshee with nails scratching down a chalkboard made out of tin and nickel, being beaten like a crackling broken drum, every time a transient or micro transient is re-created. importantly, this area of transients and micro transients, is the whole enchilada on how and what we hear, so these incredibly minimal distortions are the THE entire game itself. Period.
this pathetic and hurtful screech is misheard and misunderstood as highs and detail..... when it is really just the core of the offense and distortion that cheap audio gear can make.
Critically, it fakes the detail and info via non-linear out of phase added distortions, all while it masks or covers up the real information. Likened to covering up a bullet hole on your body with a bigger shotgun wound. Death piled up on the insults, it is.
so it’s not just listening, it’s about re-gauging what you are hearing, with these points in mind, and looking inside the unit to see how it is constructed and with what parts. All this is expensive. 1/4 watt resistors jump from 1 cent to 35 cents each, kinda thing.
It comes down to re-adjusting how you listen and hear things. things might seem a bit darker at first, as no one is sticking hot noisy drills into your ears anymore. When you relax and listen, you find that things are actually more tonally rich (in a correct and real way), detailed and dynamically perfected. The overt illiteracy of the mosh pit punt in the face (aurally) from magnetically sensitive elements in the electrical chain - is now missing. (the ’all cymbals sound the same’ problem of early digital plays out here as well--these magnetically sensitive elements provide their own typical and typified distortions)
Once you ’get it’..aurally, listening wise... there’s no going back.
And that is what begins to be the ~true~ separation point between high end and run of the mill audio schlock.
Oh yes. Fewer people and companies do it right, than you might think. It costs money and the buying group is MUCH smaller. How can one sell an item, and be around long enough with enough sales to make a living... if no one is listening nor understands it?
The bulk of the bell curve in any scenario is always mediocre, as that is it’s nature. The same goes for high end audio. You are not going to find the qualities I’m speaking of in a $500 item. All you’ll find there is trade-offs in noise. That is, if the designer was wise enough to even know these things or care about them.
I’ve even seen more than a few designers playing with the noise, shaping it, and so on... and selling that game to people. Collagen lips and breast implants for attracting buyers, in the world of audio.
When a neutral and corrected piece of gear is placed in the average noisy system, people can think it is dark and has no detail, when that is so far from the truth that it’s frightening. Happens all the time.
Frighteningly, in my experience, some high end tweaks and tweak hardware is predicated on accentuation of differing noise parameters... and goes in the exact opposite direction of where things should be going.
It’s a difficult subject, at best.
All we can do is figure it all out ourselves, one at a time. There is no other possible solution, engineering and textbooks and electrical engineering dogma can take a long walk off a short pier -- as this is about the abstract aspects of individual hearing....and it can be no other way.
