How much reality do you really need?

There is a structure. It is just very hard to define and might differ according to circumstance (the room). When you hear it you will know it. But, until you have you are a ship out on the ocean without a compass. There is only one degree of defectiveness or another. Thus the endless search for some of us. The fellow realworldaudio is quoting obviously is not there yet. There is no such thing as too much definition. There is only the definition that is there in the recording, no more and no less. Anything else is one form of distortion or another. There is no perfect but, a stereo system can be put together that with your eyes closed will convince you that you are at a live performance with the right recording of which there are many.

@rettrussell Loved that passage. Thanks for sharing it. Have you read Boorstin's short little gem, "Making experience repeatable"? It's about what happened to our appreciation of music when it was no longer a live event, connected to a time, place, social occasion.

@fuzztone  Your disdain for the topic needs to be announced, why?

NONE!!

Some very, very eloquent posts here on the relationship of reality to the listening experience. But my question is how much does that search distract from or even destroy your enjoyment of the music?

One more thing. I can understand the negativity. There were many times out of frustration I could have thrown a turntable out the window. It seemed that without spending serious money, which the vast majority of us do not have, you could never approach the ideal. The first system I heard that approached the "absolute sound" was back in 1979 and I think the person put it together by accident more than by design. I have been chasing that level of performance since. You buy a new piece of equipment hoping that it will get you there or at least closer and 80% of the time it does not or even takes you backwards. I can count the pieces of equipment that really made a big improvement on one hand. 
Also, you do not need absolute hearing to appreciate the "absolute sound." There is a lot more to it than just frequencies over 10 kHz. They really do not matter all that much. People with aging ears do not have to worry nor can they use it as an excuse.