Interesting points that hearing is is the sign of a very good resolving system, as my experience is that pre-echo can be heard with a very basic system.
I used to listen late at night with headphones, at low volumes, and could hear it with many recordings. This was in the late 70's when I was still at school and my father would go nuts if he heard me listening to music late at night, so I would get around it using headphones and listening at extremely low volumes!
The turntable was a cheap 70's Garrard with a Shure M75-6s cartridge plugged into a cheap "Rank Audio" amp and with cheap headphones. I knew nothing about cartridge / turntable setup then, and the system was very basic - not "audiophile" at all.
It was easy to hear pre-echo with just that. Headphones and good ears are all you really need.
