Some of the confusion in this discussion of how audiophiles/musicians
are qualified to judge recorded sound stems from a confusion between
two questions:

1. Does this reproduction deviate from reality?

2. In what way does this reproduction deviate from reality (or
equivalently, what mechanism causes this reproduction to deviate from
reality)?

Jenn is claiming, and I agree with this, that familiarity with reality
will sensitize someone to what deviates from it. In other words,
musicians are qualified to answer question 1.

To answer question 2 requires some experience with the mechanisms
involved.

To further illustrate that these are separate questions, let's look at
a study on infants. Psychologists have long wondered how infants learn
to synthesize different sense modalities: how do you learn that the
thing that looks like Mommy is also the thing that sounds like Mommy?
How do learn that the thing that falls is also the thing that makes the
bang when it hits?

An experiment determined that some of this synthesis is inborn. Infants
only a few days old can tell when a movie soundtrack is not synced with
the movie action.

Nobody would claim that the infants could name, measure, or
conceptualize the "time skew." But they can tell when something isn't
properly real.

Audiohpiles and recording engineers may be familiar with some of the
known ways that audio equipment distorts. But this is no substitute for
listening to the final result as a whole and asking, "Is this real?"

Mike