How can you evaluate a system with highly processed music?

@onhwy61: What you say is true of contemporary Classical recordings, but not of recordings made in the 1950’s and 60’s; all of those were recorded on a 2-track or 3-track machine (that’s all there was back then). Lots of recordings made in England and Europe were done so with minimal miking, including those made with the famous Decca tree, using only a pair of mics.

In the 70's, 80’s, and 90’s there were a number of small audiophile labels (including Wilson) making Classical recordings using only two or three mics, recorded onto a 2-track machine. I have a bunch of them, and they’re not that rare, hard to find, or expensive.

@bdp24 I agree with your comments.  Big labels recording top orchestras with an all analog chain takes us back 40 to 50 years ago.  Times have changed.

Dear @mglik  :  highly processed or not I will add to what I posted that the first step is to know " what to look for " on each one evaluation we want to do and I think that to to do that we need to define all the MUSIC home system characteristics that will be under evaluation ( each one of us have each one characteristic list that not necessarily coincide in between. ) and obviously we have to have several first hand experiences with live MUSIC ebents ( any kind of event/experiences. ).

Obviously too that we have to idenify in our " arsenal " of recordings 4-6 tracks for each characteristic that be as accurated as we can to really shows or where the characteristic really shines andafter all those we need  5-6 complete MUSIC scores to have the system whole evaluation and to be almost sure of our evaluation process we have to challenge it in at least 10-15 different systems to prove that each one of us prooooocess is " bullet proof ".

I think that with out a well defined evaluation process we could have almost nothing.

Btw, I said " accurated  as posible ", as posible because in both recording and playback process there are no true  accuracy, just does not exist, but the other way around: several inaccuracies and we have to try to mantain any kind of inaccuracy at minimum levels.  At the end we know that our ears sensitivity of sounds is very limited an non-accurated and is our main tool for system evaluation:

How The Ear Works (soundonsound.com)

R.

I have to say that those recording tracks and the full MUSIC scores must be a true challenge to any room system at  real ( live. ) SPL's. and to put at minimum all those room/system inaccuracies/distortions at least we have to intent take some measures ( today are many digital tools with a microphone at the seated position or in a near field one. ) as THD and IMD levels, noise levels, frequency response, etc,etc.

At the end we need try to stay as near is posible true to the recording and if we arrives there after the room/system fine tunning then we will enjoy the quality MUSIC levels as never before on each one  listening sessions day by day.

Obviously that all those is up to you.

R.