Recording is far more than mic selection. As others have said it’s not about accuracy, but what sounds good for the application. To mic a guitar amp there are a lot of common go to mic’s and positions with respect to the speaker cone to give the sound the engineer is looking for and how it is intended to sit in the mix. Mic’s go to preamps which all have their own characteristic sound, chosen for the application, ie fast solid state for snares, tube pre’s often used to soften vocals. Most all big ticket items! Then come a/d converters to go into the box and most everything happens in the digital domain after that, ie mixing, applications whith plug ins for compression, delay, eq, reverb etc etc etc. to alter each track. Drums may have 7 tracks which are mixed down as a sub mix. The tracks are eq’d with linear eq plug ins to sit in the overall mix and not occupy the same frequency bands, cut mud, and have the instruments and vocals sit right and be at the correct volumes. Often automation is applied to vary volume and eq in each tack through time. Then the mix goes for mastering where the final sound signature, eq, limiting, compression, reverb (very little), and levels are set. Intros and endings are faded, tacks ordered etc. What sound is desired through mastering is flavours that change through time and of course genre. East coast sound, California sound blah blah. T Burnett has a characteristic production sound exampled by Allison Krause/Robert Plants Raising Sand which is rich toned, not crisp, limited high end, mellow, strong mids, it’s a real signature sound. My point is any relation to knowing accuracy of the original instruments is meaningless. The final product is the work of art and how it sounds is hopeful what was intended by the producer. Everything has been modified along the way many times and ways. The producer is the constant hand. If you have a good audio system, hopefully you can reproduce close to what was the final work,of art. When the audiophile makes choices on equipment, it will have it’s own signature sound I.e. dac filters, and the use of interconnects as filters /tone controls which may have little to do with what the intended album was supposed to sound like. That’s the preference of the listener, not a reflection of accuracy of reproduction. Mellow tube amps for home audio give you more of that T Bone Burnett slant to the playback, all fine if that’s what you want. The reason studios don’t get bent out of shape about mic cables or interconnects is they chose a high quality transparent cable and that’s what’s needed. There is so much eq and manipulation after the cables once in digital it really doesn’t matter at all.
