I will not add anything to this very good post! thanks...
He wrote more economically than me anyway..... 😊
Skoff: "Correct judgment requires a fixed standard – one that is absolute and unvarying....we need to know what the reality we’re trying to re-create actually sounds like. And in order to gain that knowledge, we need, somehow, to experience the real thing."
From which row? Which side? There is no one fixed standard at the live event itself. There is no "the" to the initial reality.
@edcyn "I know my system doesn’t sound like live music. In many cases that’s a good thing, my system sounds better than live music."
Great observation. Indeed, the quest may be to get back to the music as conceived not as performed or performed and initially reproduced. This was Glenn Gould's idea. Concerts were not ideal ways to approximate the music. Concerts are dispensable. He did so and to all our benefit.