I think your are purest, as am I. I don't even like engineered soundstage, the best recordings seem to have fewer mic's and less mastering, IMO. Remember most of those programs are in AVRs that have DSP for the speakers and room and are gimmicks rarely used by ASR readers/posters. But as AI, sound and video merge they play role in creating believable realities that would be too expensive or impossible to undertake and will become very realistic over time. They may even rescue failed or poor recordings from the past and make sound better.
I hear what you are saying and yes, I have some excellent 3 channel classical - 3 mics for 3 channels. I've also heard 1 mic sourced material, most notably friend's direct to vinyl albums, recorded live with vinyl lathe on-site. Actually sounds
really good.
In reality, how many recordings are not engineered? I remember reading article on live concert videos, some of which sound fantastic, but the whole point of the article was that the vast majority of these recordings are studio recordings, dubbed in after the fact. Article claims there are only a handful of "live" recordings that are truly live (they had list - but I don't remember). But all I really care about is that the recording sounds good, with good dynamics and none of that loudness wars stuff going on.
So Purist? Not so sure LOL, but I like to get things where I like the sound and usually, what I like corresponds to fairly good measurements.
I do what I can with my room and without DSP and couldn't approach quality without thousands and thousands of dollars in room treatment.
I started going down that path, and in addition to it being a money pit, I was getting "how many more of those things do you need" comments from a "certain person".
Getting back to corresponding to fairly good measurements and purist.... so, a spec says that frequencies should fall within 3DB variance across the listening spectrum, but is that absolutely necessary, or should I do that? If I don't hear it, I don't completely correct it, which IMHO helps to avoid falling into the trap of over correction.
In the end, the purist in me wants to completely meet the specs for everything, reflections, reverb, frequency, etc.... The purist loves to read about DSP and understand the concepts. The realist in me says enjoy the music because I can't hear much of what the spec is trying to achieve.