It is commonly accepted that musicians are not as critical of hifi systems as their non-musician audiophile counterparts. This is because a musician tends to use audio more as a memory-jogger rather than actually listening to the sound being produced.

Perhaps that's a sweeping statement that only has a little truth in it, but our ears (and receptors in the brain) do have abilities that cannot be mimicked even by the best of microphones.

We can 'focus' (or as Richard put it, mentally filter!) on the sounds we want to hear, and to a greater or lesser extent, depending upon distractions, ignore the sounds we do not wish to hear.

That said, next door's dog barking at three in the morning is a different matter!

I suffer with quite serious tinnitus (Richard's 'slight whistle' in my case his a constant loud hiss, almost white noise), but have learned to deal with it by 'switching off' my ears. Unfortunately, it means people think I'm ignoring them as they know I'm not deaf...

As for bass frequencies, I can only echo what others have already said - what you think you hear isn't necessarily what you actually hear!