Reply #124: Which reminds me of another contentious idea...

[Silent3]

...that some differences in audio equipment or recording techniques are real, but something which sounds better isn't necessarily more accurate. Some people don't care that their preferences might reflect a taste for "euphonic distortion", but others are insulted by the notion that their preferences might be for a less accurate rendition of music, since these people know that they prefer what they prefer because it supplies the truest rendition of music.

Whereas suggesting that what a person thinks they hear isn't real at all carries the risk of being taken as an insult to that person's sanity ("You think I'm delusional!? You think I'm crazy!?"), a parallel to how some theists react to atheist suggestions that spirits and deities are imaginary, the notion of euphonic distortion is more of a threat to some people's sense of their own knowledge, expertise, and perceptiveness. Perhaps a closer parallel in religious debate, rather than atheist vs. theist disagreements, is differences in doctrinal interpretation, or interpretation of "spiritual experiences", within religions.