When I play clips of Japanese audio and listen closely, I hear e in some words and ɛ in others.
For example, in words like: いいね and 猫 I hear [ɛ] . and in words like 駅 I hear [e].
What is going on here? Is there any kind of rule, does it vary by speaker, does no one notice or care? Or am I wrong and it’s actually an ɛ̝?
e - Close-mid front unrounded vowel
It’s e̞ / ɛ̝
But ofc, pronunciation can slightly shift based on the exact chain of sounds, the linked article above goes very deeply into a couple of those cases.
¿ə
If words are not actually distinguished by a pair of very similar sounds, then yes, it’s likely natives don’t notice any difference and do not care.
Is the audio you are listening to from/by the same speaker in both cases. Things can sound a little different coming from different people, even though they are saying the same thing.