But then the question becomes which is accurate. Unless we're talking something blatantly euphonic like high second harmonic distortion I don't always find it easy to tell. And sometimes you're just shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic, e.g., reconstruction filters can sound different but technically, they're all wrong in different ways -- this one has preringning, that one doesn't but is minimum rather than linear phase, etc.
This will be a little bit off topic given where you're coming from but it's worth thinking about.
In terms of pre/post ringing for reconstruction filters, as far as I know the effect is measured in single-digit millisecond periods in modern equipment. I don't think it stacks up against aliasing (what reconstruction filters are meant to combat) as the real issue.
However, ringing is much grosser and much more perceptible in other areas. Let's start big, with time/amplitude differences for concert soundsystems.
In live sound reinforcement, getting consistent sound is very difficult. A loose piece of evidence is concert hall ticket pricing, which is somewhat linked to acoustic assessments of sound quality (clarity, evenness, mix of direct vs. reverberant sound) in different seats. Apart of the architecture of the venue and its acoustic effects, the zone of coverage produced by each speaker within an array has to be adjusted to ensure consistency. Consider that amplitude differences are not only due to additive effects of multiple speakers directed to the same area, but also, because of their varying positions and many possible locations of listeners, frequency-dependent relative phase. Phase adjustments (i.e., small timing adjustments) become as important as EQ in this case to achieve even response.
This acoustic situation reoccurs in a similar way electronically in the studio. During mixing, every component in the chain affects the signal's phase and amplitude cumulatively. The complication here is that bandwidths, slopes and phase of each are different, and trying to boost/attenuate in one place may result in screwy changes you don't expect elsewhere in the spectrum. Say you want to boost a particular track within a given passage using EQ—the changes to phase around the target frequency will not be completely predictable, such that there might be a small dip around the edges of the band when mixed with other material despite the boost of everything else in the middle. Trying to EQ those dips once you hear them can easily become a nightmare given that rerouting that track to another piece of gear will introduce another set of shifts corresponding to additional squiggles in the amplitude response. On top of that you're doing this for multiple tracks, many of which are likely to inhabit the same frequency range. It's also not uncommon for engineers to boost "empty space" in the highs because the Q will subtly adjust the lower registers. This behaviour of equalizers and other components is also called ringing, i.e., the differences in settling time that occur when the signal is routed through the circuit. This type of ringing is
very audible and is measured over much longer periods.
I didn't once mention microphones or recording because this has nothing to do with that. There is no single reference point for accuracy. There are system capabilities and responses, all of which are to some degree measurable, but which oftentimes can't be measured because of the impracticality of doing so during a session. Knowing all of this though, and keeping that entire complex chain of effects in mind, is what makes a good engineer.
By extension, good, well-designed gear will have predictable or at least well-described responses, and will not take advantage of psychoacoustic effects like masking if that masking serves a specifically euphonic purpose which can't be relied on once the mix leaves the session and is heard on different systems. The Benchmark amp will have the least effect on that entire electronic chain of events I described above when you're monitoring, and will therefore be the most accurate.
