I think this thread is the arguement over whether reproduced sound ever approaches live sound. This is the very basis of the notion of Hi-Fi. Which you all know means sound that is as close as possible to the original sound recorded. This remians the mission of many if not most designers engineers and hobbyists. It may be the holy grail for many but I have decided to be less concerned about how close the sound of my stereo is to original sonic output of the actual instruments voices etc. Most, if not all recorded sound must played into a mic and amplified before it goes through several mastering and other audio engineering steps. Since I have not been at the recording sessions, that made my music collection, I can't honestly compare the recorded sound that my rig makes, to any true memory of the music when it was made.
So to argue that it either sounds like an actual cello, piano, guitar, or human voice, doesn't mean it sounds the same as the actual cello, piano....voice that was recorded.
Thus, I guess it is somewhat of a relief, to just have a system that sounds real to me. It has the sonics which make listening music a pleasure. When your system fails to do that then you should be motivated to make changes. So I argue to disregard any slavish dictums about what you should want to hear according to some unknown, random, and potentially biased authority, pronouncing which systems attain the goal high fidelity and which don't.
I don't think you can never extract the element of subjectivity from the appreciation of recorded music. If we could be completely objective the all we would have to do is rank components by their measurments and aspire to buy the equipment which measures best. We don't do this in practice. I think that is good and fortunate.
