I don’t know what it is, if it really happens to all of us or not, or if the brain really controls the hearing perception or not. The brain is not well understood by science today, there’s so much to learn... How our hearing has been calibrated through millions of years of evolution on earth, etc... I’m not in that field so my opinion is only formed by sonic perception, and the experience of obsessing about music reproduction for decades. I like to call it the goose bump factor - if a well recorded cello piece gives me goose bumps and I can hear the resonance of it’s wood body, it’s a good sign of a component I’m likely to keep.
One thing I can control is to keep a component in my system or not depending on how it sounds to me. BTW, my wife complained about the sound of the main system sounding “small”, like it’s coming out of a “tin can” when I had the adi-2 in. So without the intention of creating a subjective vs objective debate. Because I am an objective audiophile, I went ahead and bought 4 DACs in Amir’s blue list. 3 out of 4 sounded amazing and I’m keeping them, IMO better than my previous Yggdrasil (now sold). One somehow didn’t sound amazing despite my efforts to make it work by tweaking setting, cables, associated components, etc.. I’m not keeping the adi-2 just because it tested well. It could be me, the rest of the system, I don’t know... I’m also not trying to be right or to judge anyone, I’m just sharing my experience.
PS: I found this
YouTube video comparing the Brooklyn (never herd it in my system) with the adi-2. Can anyone hear the difference?