I assumed what we heard in relation to timbre was on the recordingTry any recording in a bad system and try to distinguish clearly the different instruments playing and their timbre distinctive voicing...
Good luck....
After that try that on a good system, with a low noise floor in all his three working dimensions especially acoustical....
You will understand...
The information about timbre in any recording source is uncomplete by definition and by the choices of the recording engineer.... Trade-off inevitable choices...This is the bad news...
The good news is we can compensate this in our own room settings by making our gear able to sound at his best potential.... Imaging, soundstage but especially timbre is the test that our controls of the noise floors are right....It will never be the REPRODUCTION of the original event which is impossible but a good partial RECREATION...
You room never reproduce your source but recreate it....