Sound, neutrality and the pursuit of everything

A system that reveals all the instruments and inner details clearly can sound better than live music in these ways, much like a 4K TV looks sharper and more colorful than reality, but lacks the expansive presence of being there. A room system also cannot provide that overwhelming sensory experience of being there, but it should not be expected to. I enjoy them both as an in-home experience that can impress me in ways that being there cannot.   

+1 @bkeske. When you eat a good meal, how do you decide whether or not it lives up to reality? You don’t, because it IS reality. And you are enjoying it. 
Above and beyond that there’s not much I can add to the good comments above. There is no way to get back to a neutral sound, overall, but there is some thing like the sound of a guitar or an oboe or a clarinet that we can hear live. 
But even if we are trying to recapture a concert, are we talking about the front row or the back row? In what kind of room? And everybody’s hearing is different so who’s hearing are we trying to reproduce? It is impossible to get back to a single reality because there are so many different variables and perspectives. So what we are trying to do is have an experience. Question becomes, does the gear produce an experience we want to have again?

There is no ideal sound, at least for home playback. As you move along in this hobby you should obtain better and better sound, but never an ideal sound. It’s unobtainable because there is no ideal. There is no glass ceiling. There is no such thing as getting within 5% or 2% of perfection. You shouldn’t be trying to achieve what you hear at a concert, only what is recorded on the record or CD. There is no perfection because of all the things that can go wrong in the audio system, and do go wrong. As Bob Dylan says at the end of all his records, good luck to everybody.

HI,
It should be that hunting for everything else brings in the end neutrality. What is worth for me is the ability of hearing clearly everything simultaneously on a recording (good or mediocre) and that thing to bind so well together as a whole to make sense.
Learn to know the compromises of your system and how to hide them or live with them. All ears are different and set different priorities. The live event is the absolute and because we can get close with stereo or multichannel brings us joy.

Have to think about it let you know in 2 weeks.