Is it possible to really know what you're doing?

@lanx0003 stated  " In a concert hall, the sonic quality perceived by you and me is heavily dependent on the acoustic treatment and where you sit "

I have been to Concert Halls where Rock Music is produced Heavily Dependent on Electronics to create the Sound.

The End Sound from the PA System is directional, in the case of my being at the PULSE in 1994 at the Royal Albert Hall from a very distant recollection the PA was a large proportion Electrostatic Speakers, hence very very directional End Sound.

Solely Acoustic Sound is Omnidirectional and is very different in comparison to directional sound.

An Audio System, even with a expansive Sound Stage is really only a reminder of an experience when presenting a sound that may have been heard in a previous or later experience as an Omnidirectional produced End Sound.  

pindac makes a good point. The vast majority of music we listen to is electronically created and is a product of the producer's fantasy.

I prefer live recordings done in one take, preferably with one mic in a nice room and an experienced engineer. Good examples are recordings by John Cuniberti for his OneMic series.

There are plenty of really good live recording, especially classical and jazz. Pop music; not so much (not to say the recordings are bad, but they are artifices of the recording process and the resultant recordings are constructions that never happened in real time).

Not that it matters much. If you like it, it is good!

Grammy-nominated recordings typically reflect the highest standards of recording engineering and fidelity.  In Grammy-nominated or Grammy-winning recordings, the recording engineering approach is almost always multi-microphone technique, not One Mic.  Multi-mic tech. enables precise control over indi. instruments, vocals, room acoustics, direct sound, image, SS depth, etc. We are talking about reference / standard here in lieu of something based on someone's ad hoc opinion.

Swapping, mixing and matching high fidelity components and cables is a long cherished audiophile activity which undoubtedly has produced countless hours of audio enjoyment.

The drawback to this process is the amount of time and expense that it consumes. Today with digital signal processing (DSP) you can tune and optimize your system real time.

First start by combining excellent speakers, modern power amplifiers with a digital source which will leverage Dirac or other DSP System / Room correction algorithms

Once you have your speakers positioned, the next  step is to optimize your system using tools like REW and Dirac Live room correction. Now you can make adjustments,  listen to the results and measure the results rapidly. It’s enlightening to be able to make adjustments to your system and measure them in real time.

https://deercreekaudio.com/tech-blog

Here are some examples of Dirac Live correction 

But you missed a very important consideration - are they designed to emulate a point source of sound?

@richardbrand 

You’re absolutely correct. It’s interesting that MBL’s founder was motivated by the desire to move about the listening room without loss of sound quality. 

I completely empathize with that approach. I find the idea of sitting at length in a single chair in a windowless, mausoleum-like room triangulated as if by a land surveyor, unappealing.

I can move around my room, including in the 15 ft-deep space behind my speakers, without experiencing a major deterioration in sound quality. Which actually makes sense, since they have 3 open-baffle mids, arranged in a modest line array; front- and rear-firing ribbon tweeters; and two 10" woofers in sealed, divided enclosures.

I wish I could say that extensive research and countless auditions led me to a speaker architecture that works in my room and is right for me, but I got them off craigslist because they were cheap and they looked good. They were intended as interim speakers while I looked for my "real" speakers, but a funny thing happened: I grew to really like them.

I say this as someone who’s always loved the transparency and speed of planar speakers. I was this close to buying a set of Sanders 10e, but merely standing up from your chair felt as if someone had put a motorcycle helmet over your ears. They are amazing-sounding speakers that I warmly recommend to anyone who doesn’t mind their beaminess, but at the end of the day I’m glad I didn’t buy them.

Answering this simple question can eliminate 99% of speakers!  Not to mention, antagonising the 99% of audiophiles who own those speakers.

Worthwhile outcomes both! 😂