@pathfinder@actuallyautistic this is so interesting, having no reproduction of sound in your mind yet having excellent memory when you’re actually comparing what you’re hearing to what you’ve heard before.
I can mentally reproduce sounds, but I don’t have perfect pitch. My relative pitch is pretty damn good tho, so if I have a reference in working memory, I can name notes relative to that reference, until a few seconds later. Then it’s gone until I take another reference “measurement”.
I don’t have a particular talent in identifying accents but I can imitate the way people say words, even if I don’t know the language. It’s not like I can immediately imitate a whole sentence in a language I can’t speak hearing it off TV but, say, if a person is in front of me and repeats the word a few times, I’m pretty sure I can imitate it perfectly within a couple tries