This reminds me of the “DACs and the placebo effect” thread that went up recently too:
There’s a discussion about hearing acquity in that thread that is relevant here too. Here is one of my contributions:
“Unless you have physical hearing damage due to some trauma or overexposure to noise, you very likely don’t have bad ears. In fact, assuming good ear health, I don’t think audiophiles have meaningfully better physical hearing acquity than the general population - in other words our ears don’t work any better than average. Listening to music is more about memory and pattern recognition. We audiophiles tend to care more about and pick out patterns and slight changes in the patterns of sound(s) we’re hearing in the music. To say one DAC sounds different than another is really to say that our ears are perceiving a difference in the sound pattern(s) through one DAC as compared to another (or through one amp vs another, etc). It also takes time for the brain to memorize patterns (of any kind, not just sound) to the point where it will detect slight changes to those patterns. To do so new physical connections have to be created in the brain - new synaptic pathways have to form - and that takes time. If you’re new to the hobby and can’t tell the differences yet, don’t fret, your brain is working on it. Give it time.”
In the context of this present thread, the answer to your question is “no”. Your ears are not actually hearing more. Your brain is recognizing more. Your brain has become more acustomed to recognizing aural patterns. Similar hearing differences happen in my house too. I’ll hear something well before the partner and kids do. Once I point it out, they hear if it’s a repeating sound. Most likely, you’re not any more weird than the rest of us audiophiles 