The music industry is built on a system of expert evaluation focused on sound, but the foundations are challenged by recent research, which suggests that sight trumps sound. This presents a challenge to music educators, who train the next generation of expert performers and listeners. The aim of this study is to investigate students' perceptions of the moot audition as experiential learning in tertiary music education. Auditioners experienced live performances (blind and sighted) and then three audiovisual presentations (audio-only, visual-only and audiovisual). This student panel discovered the challenges of applying evaluation criteria and considered the way in which they might evaluate performances with specific musical ensembles in mind. The audition scenarios challenged students' listening acuity for performance and performer evaluation, and confirmed the importance of visual cues in music performance. Students became cognisant of the importance of sound and sight in their own performance preparation and engaged with real-world applications of recent perceptual and cognitive research in music performance.