A couple problems with this article.
Unamplified live music is affected by the room. This has just as much or more bearing on the sound then an "amplifier."
Secondly, it depends on your position relative to the instrument or vocalist. As a guitarist, I sit behind the instrument. An acoustic guitar is going to sound different to me than it does to someone who sits in front of me. And if you're sitting off to the side it'll sound different. And if you're sitting in front of an amplified guitar cabinet it's going to sound a lot more like the recording than if you're sitting 50' away because guitar cabinets are close-mic'd. And if I move my head 1" it'll sound different. And on and on.
And do we really want it to sound real? Almost all recordings are post-processed. Why? Because live performances have real or perceived flaws or deficiencies. Or some instruments are too dominant in the live setting and must be dialed back. Or the room doesn't have enough reverb, or too much reverb. Or slap echo. And so on.
And I'll end with our limited acoustic memory. How do we remember what "real" is? A good example is an Anderton's YouTube video called Head or Tread. Rob Chapman, a very experienced musician and guitar company owner, did a blind test of various tube amps, solid-state amps, profilers (computers that mimic an amp) and pedals to determine which was an amp head and which was a pedal. He owns some of these amps and the profiler. He got almost all of them wrong, including the amp he uses at most of his guitar clinics. And again, according to studies, musicians are supposed to have better acoustic memories than the average person.