It can depend on the mixing, too. Not just in regards to volume, but also in how the vocals are edited. My recent obsession has been Dusk at Cubist Castle, shit’s absolutely amazing. The way a lot of the vocals are mixed and processed are super cool, like layering the same lines over themselves five times over with subtle delays and panning, it sounds real cool! But it makes it sound a lot more distant to me as a result.
Oh almost certainly. I have ADHD, prolly autistic, and I’ve had many times where my mind stopped processing what people are saying. Which is bad when you work tourism xD