arXiv:2610.36865v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: Audio systems aim to maximise the listener's perceived quality, traditionally evaluated through mean opinion scoring (MOS), a subjective process that is slow, costly, and collected only after playback. Machine learning now predicts MOS directly from the audio, but in generalising across participants it tends to discard the subject variance that defines individual perception. Neurophysiological measures may offer a complementary signal taken directly from the listener, objective, implicit, and continuous, though prior work has relied on laboratory-grade EEG and fNIRS. We ask how practical consumer-grade devices compare, and whether they might recover population-level audio-quality trends and, when calibrated per listener, track that listener's effort. Recording 32-channel laboratory EEG alongside wearable EEG, fNIRS, and eye tracking from thirty listeners, our results suggest commercial wearable and optical sensing can decode audio quali...