An observation based only on playing asst rock songs with electric and acoustic guitars, drums, and vocalists, in a 45m2, 500 ft2 room, at parties with like 25-30 people incl a lot of musicians,

My experience is,
* when the whole night is played 100% clean, several people will always say, "that bass sounds fantastic", and, * when there's a bit of (to me, pleasant tubey) overdrive or basically any other effects, somebody will say eg., "I think there's a blown speaker"....

How we hear it, and how they hear it