Listeners judge loudspeakers equally well on studio-produced popular music

Evidence

It is often assumed that listeners are recognizing excellence and rejecting inferiority when judging sound quality. Regular concertgoers and musicians were assumed to be inherently more skilled as listeners. As logical as this seemed, it was soon thrown into question when listeners in the tests showed that they could rate products just as well with studio-created popular music as they could with classical music that was painstakingly captured with simple microphone setups, frequently even better. — Toole, Floyd E, Sound reproduction- the acoustics and…, 1039

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to how studio-monitoring tradeoffs and close-miking shape sound quality perception; parallels ear-training debates in audio.
• QUESTION: Why exactly did listeners rate products better with studio-created music? The passage says the comments revealed ‘extravagant’ criticism of poor products.