How can a system be judged with highly processed, non acoustic music?

@frogman we are on the same page. Hardly throwing in the towell. Impossible with my growing microphone collection. A steady diet of unamplified music in reverberant space, captured simply ( a great three channel mixer, anyone ? Rudy Bozak get busy . My mentor and i are currently discussing why a particularly fine Earthworks microphone, while fine for a stereo pair high up for ambience, is not accurate enough for loudspeaker production quality control…
i am a student…..but i make my own references…..
i don’t go looking for timbre in an ELP piano…..

So like I said hard to explain. But I think we are trying to listen for those patterns that are "true" to the whatever it was, and then do something very demanding. We have to somehow put aside all the many different aspects that came before our system, because we can do nothing about them. But then focus on the aspects that come after, because that is our system and that we can do something about.

Learning to sort those out. One of the bigger keys to the kingdom

i agree...

My only added point is our brain data base is heavily programmed to recognized timbre voices from all origin in closed or open space... Survival mode....

My experience is the same as frogman..

My experience has been that building a system that best reproduces unprocessed acoustic music allows processed music to sound best.

@wolf_garcia. Yeah, stereotyping guitar brands with a particular type of sound is ultimately treacherous as hell, but I still can't help but do it. I also gotta say that me and the wife have more than our share of steel string acoustics in the house.  Damn, her Everett sounds lovely! And in earlier days I spent an inordinate amount of time at McCabe's Guitar Shop and similar joints, taking guitars off the wall to sample.

At any rate, I think of a Gibson acoustic as sounding dry and midrangey --  a sound particularly designed not to get in the way of vocals. A Gibson L-00 (yeah, it's tiny) suits this sound to a T, as do many Gibby dreads. Martins, particularly dreadnaughts, sound big and complex -- made for propelling bluegrass bands. 

I've never heard or played an Olson Guitar, but I've played the other brands you mention, and sound-wise they all generally hew to the Martin sound. And  oh yes, I truly love the Froggy Bottom and the Santa Cruz.

@mglik -- I gotta tell ya' that pianos' sounds can vary remarkably by both brand and size. Again, I'm typecasting here to beat the band, but Steinways tend to sound clangy and Baldwins tend to sound mellow. Bosendorfer inhabits the tonal spot between them.

edcyn
I own a '37 Gibson LOO! It belonged to a Vaudeville performer named the King of Strings. And boy, is it...
Not all Martins are as described. The dreds more so. I also have a sweet 017 Martin. Also spent many hours at McCabes.
Used to have a Santa Cruz Tony Price Pro. Great Brazilian. But I prefer the older small ones.
Many pianists say that a Fazoli piano is the Rolls Royce.

mglik
How can I forget Fazioli? I actually played one at one of the piano stores I used to haunt. (Yeah, is this refrain getting old. I'm a more of a sucker for musical Instrument stores than stereo stores.) I think Maurizio Pollini was playing a Fazioli when I saw him live.

And oh yeah. I sweet-talked a 1930's  L-00 out the owner's hands at an Old Time jam. He said it had spent WWII aboard a Navy ship. I was loathe to admit to him that it sounded a ways better than my brand new Ren Ferguson-built edition...my current fave among my gits.