Our ears are relative quite accurate, the problem is that they are connected to a brain which at times actually likes distortion, just listen to any Hendrix tune.
Our ears are not "accurate" as an electrical tool is, which tool own a fixated accuracy range determined once for all , our ears do not and this different accuracy range for each of us vary also in time ...Our ears/brain is not a Fourier engine ... the ears is a living organism not a tool ...
Our ears coupled with a brain created their own soundfield for each of us which is slightly different in each of us with his own variable "accuracy" ... Our ears/brain is not designed for "accuracy" as in details mathematically fixated but for the perception and interpretation of integral qualities as a whole ...Qualia not numbers ...
Then comparing the ears to an electrical tool is meaningless ...The ears is not a tool no more than any other organs of the body are an internal or external tool ... the heart is not a mere tool pump ... The brain dont work as a computer as demonstrated clearly by J.J. Gibson the genius who revolutionize the field of visual perception ,...The thought dont come from a neural network but emerge from the microtubules level and the quantum level as demonstrated by Penrose/Hameroff/ Bandyopadhyay ... But here it is another story i can explain here ......
https://twitter.com/StuartHameroff/status/1727440517867385290
Then saying that the Brain like distortion Alas! is supposing that our ears /brain is alas! a bad Fourier engine and explicitly regretting it as you seems to do 😁... is preposterous, ridiculous reaction totally ... laughable if this confusion was not the symptom of a sad fact...
We must not confuse music with sine waves and think hearing sine waves that hearing an image of the music we then understand how the brain create/perceive music as QUALIA ...We must understand the non linear working of the brain in his own time domain which make it irreducible to the linear Fourier maps; then if we do not understand this we confuse linear and non linear, then confuse the complete territory with a partial set of abstract maps glued linearly together ... ...So useful technologically maps could be they are in no way the territory... And in spite of the advances with our digital technology we dont understand hearing yet...
Technology is not science and science is not knowledge ...
Read this mijostyn it is short article you NEVER READ it seems :
https://phys.org/news/2013-02-human-fourier-uncertainty-principle.html
I am perhaps "romantic" as you described me but i read science too ...😁😊😊😉
An EQ user manual is not an introduction to acoustics nor an introduction to a hearing theory ..😊 Sorry for the bad news ...