One of the most frustrating things for me in audio listening discussions is people who listen primarily to amplified instruments and performances repeat ad nauseum and want their super fantastic audio systems to sound like live performances. Really? You expect a Benchmark/Focal system to sound just like a stack of Marshalls and a Peavey PA system in a night club? Get real!
Most music recordings are collaborative creations between musicians, producers, recording engineers and mastering engineers - and have no reality as a live event to be recreated. They are studio creations. In my view, any quest for extreme "accuracy" in an audio system can logically only be to reproduce the sound of the mastering studio - and/or the information the engineers encoded into the recording.
Classical music in a good acoustic venue - from solo instruments to full orchestras, folk music or jazz with only acoustic instruments and no microphones and PA system, again in a good acoustic environment, are the only types of music where there is any logic in wanting to reproduce a live event. As a high school student in Chicago, I was an usher for the Chicago Symphony Orchestra near the end of the Fritz Reiner era - and right in the middle of the period of his magnificent series of pioneering early stereo recordings for RCA. Over the many years, I have attended a fair number of acoustic music events, and such events are the basis for my desire to reproduce live music events, which are a small portion of my collection of recorded music.
OTOH, I have a fair collection of electronic (synthesizer) music - which has only electronic equipment and speakers as sound sources. If you directly record a guitar pickup or synthesizer digital output, what is the "live" acoustic reference you want recreate? Oops - it doesn't exist - care to restate your audio reproduction goals?
Many audiophiles who only listen to studio recordings and live, PA amplified non-classical concert music "say that it is impossible for live music to be reproduced faithfully" when such a phrase is essentially a non-sequitur.
In spite of my profound disagreement with contributor Maty here on many issues the "how" and "why" of things, I agree whole-heartedly that what the music does for us emotionally as individuals should be the core of any audio system quest. It was interesting for me to learn here today that recording and mastering engineers "dry" (clincal, detailed, analytical?) acoustic systems and environments for making recordings so they can more easily detect flaws and imperfections, but prefer "wetter" (not clincal, detailed or analytical) for listening at home.
The people that I respect most in audio - including contributors at forums like this - are the ones who pursue listening goals that are real and approachable, even if those goals are never quite completely attainable. I do not respect those seeking to attain what is not possible - reproduction of something that does not even exist except as strange fantasies. (The technical aspects of audio system is another interest that is mostly separate from my enjoyment of music, but interconnected with it. I am a "techhie" at heart.)
Maybe I will start using my old Les McCann line when people start babbling about making studio-created and manipulated recordings sound like live and ask which live events they are trying to reproduce.
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p.s. I still would love to own a Benchmark DAC and amp driving a pair of Goldenear Technology Reference of similar quality loudspeakers