My observations were totally subjective, but I don't think I would just be making them up. I didn't expect any change at all, and I never revved back to check, but I could swear that there was a quality change. (Not quality necessarily as in good or bad, but more as in timbre. I thought it sounded worse at the time, but that might just be due to unexpected change.)

And not only did you start a sentence with a conjunction, but the whole paragraph. (I actually don't have a big problem with that one.) I've never seen any egregious errors like Anti describes, either.