It seems plausible to me. I assume that when you are doing a comparison, you are comparing a single source to a memory (does anyone do comparisons by playing two synchronized sources together, possibly into different ears?) In that case, I can well imagine that listening to multiple live performances primes one's mind to remember clearly how a given presentation sounded, and to pick out small differences, precisely because live performances are all slightly different. I would further imagine that performing a piece, and particularly practicing with the rest of the orchestra or conducting a practice, further enhances one's ability to notice and characterize small differences.
Of course, this might be utter nonsense, and I will bow to bayindirh's judgement on that!
Of course you can train your ears, to be able to hear more detail and learn to differentiate and identify frequencies.
That'll definitely help with hearing differences between two tracks. But i don't think you can compare live music to recorded tracks. Especially acoustic instruments, the room is such a big factor with those.
I am not actually suggesting that one should compare recorded music to live performances for the purpose of comparing audio encoding technologies. Oddly, your reply to bayindirh is in complete agreement with what I wrote here.
I think he explained it a little better. I totally understand that you'll learn to identify which frequencies and sounds belong to which instrument and in turn learn to identify when those are missing.
I guess that also teaches your ears to identify differences in other situations more clearly.
That's what mixing and mastering engineers practice their whole career and get really good at.
Of course, this might be utter nonsense, and I will bow to bayindirh's judgement on that!