I think you are wrong to dismiss ___domain experts opinions as leaving science. Machine learning 101 is eye ball your data, as the human brain is the most powerful pattern matcher known. A musicians ear is therefore the best tool for detecting anomolies in sound and should not be dismissed for not having a nice mathematical construction. Acoustics are perceptual and are heavily filtering the real world sound waves so I don't think its possible to reduce the laudatory cortex to simple filters like its ignoring phase or whatnot.
Want an A/B test? Put your hi-fi in the same room with a real singer, or an acoustic guitar, or whatever musical instrument, and see how hard it is to tell them apart. Not very, I assure you.
Interestingly, we can pick up very subtle and useful musical cues from very poor recordings and reproduction. It's a complex thing.
