This article appeared a while back in an on-line audiophile review site. (The type I'd guess most people here wouldn't visit).
I thought it was quite insightful as a message from a
recording engineer/mixer/producer to audiophiles wanting naturalistic recordings and realism.
It does cover aspects of discussions here and in most audiophile forums. But it was nice to see it sort of tied up in a bow in an article:
Reality Is Overrated When It Comes to Recordings:
Hi-Fi news, gear reviews, and interviews
parttimeaudiophile.com
My take: Assuming one agrees with the gist of the article, it does make sense of the approach of those audiophiles (typical of ASR members I think) where you just want to accurately reproduce the recording. All the production choices and effects in so much recorded music is what it is: artistic choices for the most part, and that's what one wants to hear, not some enforced "realism" per se. (But also, if a recording is meant to sound natural, it should come across that way in an accurate system).
Personally I generally agree: I consider all the production choices and artificiality to be part of the artistic content (which they obviously are). And, as cliche as it may be to say, so many of those "audiophile recordings" - minimalist micing, low compression yadda, yadda - often come across as pretty bland. I remember when a pal of mine who was a guitarist in a local artsy pop/folksy band became an audiophile and convinced the band and recording engineers to go for a more audiophile-approved "natural" minimally mic'd presentation. Well, yeah, it sounded a bit more "real" or natural in some aspects, but artistically it took a step back and just sort of "sat there" in that bland way of many audiophile recordings. To my ears it was a failure relative to their previously produced recordings.
(BTW, I'm on record here on being fascinated by live vs reproduced sound, and wanting to nudge my sound a bit more towards "natural/real" in some ways, but not in some fool's errand goal of everything sounding truly real, just enough flavour to taste, without losing the distinctive character of different recordings).
I'm curious about other people's thoughts on the article or subject.