As a philosophical matter, I take issue with the word truth. I am of the POV that there is no such thing as knowing the truth. We can only know more of the truth. We can get “truthier”. It’s a never ending search.
Audiophiliacs are what we call those people who are obsessively connected to this search through their ears.
That aside:
As others have already said, the best that a good audio system can do is to reproduce what is in the recording (and, in my case, in the grooves) with the greatest accuracy as possible.
As a general rule, this makes almost all records - at least in my system - sound “better”: or, different, in the direction of having more information being revealed. As we all hear differently, it sounds “better” to me, but maybe you don’t like the information being revealed, so maybe not to you.
If the system is “good” enough, you can hear the decisions of the engineer, “good” or “bad”, and the limitations of the technology that he or she was using. I’ve learned to regard this as often than not as part of the charm of the recording, but that usually means that the content itself is not much more than a curiosity and I’m not listening to it that much.
But if it is a poorly engineered/pressed - or simply not to my liking in some manner - record that is a favorite, especially if it’s one from my youth (I’m thinking Beggars Banquet by the Stones as a prime example, or Canto General by Theodorakis/Neruda), I’m a non-purist black cat white cat as long as you catch the mouse sorta guy. The engineer in the studio makes decisions: if he made (subjective) decisions that I don’t like, I have no problem making the decision to try to correct them on the playback end. I have a “phase alignment correction” thingy and a consequence of kicking it in and dialing things up or down is that it adds dimension, depth, and presence. I’m also able to dial the cartridge one way or the other at the preamp stage in order to reduce harshness.
Because in the end, for me, since there’s only “truthier”, and because the recording engineers decisions are subjective, and because we all hear differently, and because the stamper might have worn out, etc etc yaowzza, the “search” is not for the truth, but rather for the most enjoyable experience of the artist’s intentions that I am able to pull out of the grooves. In other words, I think the search is governed by Freud’s pleasure principle rather than Plato’s objectivity. And if we all here are honest with ourselves, I think that’s what most of us through this hobby are actually searching for as well: a pleasurable truthiness (or rather, a truthy pleasure).
