It's actually an interesting philosophical question, though in the end Reubent is right, if it brings you enjoyment don't worry about it. Initially, my understanding of the meaning of high fidelity/hi-fi was to mean fidelity to the source, i.e., the master tape, not necessarily the actual musical event being recorded, as the recording engineers and producers would be the ones to determine how close to the actual recorded event the master tape/record/disc came out. An accurate component was one that faithfully amplified what it was fed, or accurately read and transcribed what was on the disc. There were precious few components in the early days of hi-fi that did this. This led to the "spec wars" when transistor equipment first came out, where solid state amps would have vanishing amounts of distortion, especially when compared with tubed designs, in an effort to be more "accurate". They also sounded awful compared to those tubed designs. If you look at the specs of a lot of today's equipment, you'll see that many manufacturers of high end equipment today (see, for example, the Wavac measurements, or any single-ended triode amp's measurements--Sean started an excellent, though controversial, thread on this point) seem to be taking a different view of what high fidelity is supposed to mean. It might be an attempt to sound more like the original musical event, or else to get to the artist's message via your emotions. Perhaps not accurately transcribing or amplifying what was on the tape, but also perhaps getting across the musical message or the sensation of being at the recording venue, trying to make up for what was lost in the recording process. This may not be all that bad, given some recording practices where orchestral recordings spotlight individual instruments in a way you'd never hear in the concert hall, and pop producers use all sorts of devices to create the sound they think will sell, rather than faithfully portray the actual sound of the artist performing. From my standpoint, I prefer a component that makes my recordings sound more real, as if I were at a musical event, than one that shows me every splice of the master tape made by the recording engineer, every creak of a chair, etc.--that's the illusion that I'm asking my system to create. But there is a basic amount of accuracy to the master tape I do expect as well--I don't want boomy one-note bass, I don't want bassoons that sound like saxaphones or clarinets, or violas that sound like cellos or violins. So my definition of "accuracy" may differ from many others' here, and certainly from the original concept of the word as I understand it. But it's really a philosophical discussion, not one that should be thought about too much lest you lose your perspective on why you have your system in the first place.
