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You're really describing the difference between audio production, where the original sound is deliberately distorted to produce a pleasing result, and audio reproduction where the aim is that if you close your eyes you can't tell whether the band is in the room with you.
If you think your highly distorting playback equipment exactly matches what the artist had in mind when he created the recording, you are hearing his creation as he intended it to be heard. On the other hand, if the artist's preferred medium is live performance, then you will get closest to enjoying his work as he would have wanted by the most faithful possible replication of the sound you would have heard if you had actually been in the room with him.
gbj_tester-
If you think your highly distorting playback equipment exactly matches what the artist had in mind when he created the recording, you are hearing his creation as he intended it to be heard.
This is why I only listen to post-1973 Pink Floyd and anything produced by Martin Hannett on my Tannoys
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I'd agree with all of that IF the original recording, the original master tape that the artist and label signed off on was effectively a totally transparent recreation of "the artist playing in the room". But it wasn't, it was a recording of the artist playing in the room, recorded to tape and played back through a desk, an amp and speakers.
The theoretical totally transparent reproduction doesn't get you back into the room with the artist, it can only ever get you back to the original master. My point is that the original master recording wasn't signed off using the theoretical totally transparent mastering reproduction method either so aiming for total transparency isn't necessarily any more "true" than another, possibly slightly coloured reproduction.
And all of this totally avoids the point that most music isn't mastered to sound its best on high end mastering studio gear (or the theoretical totally transparent reproduction machine) it's mastered to sound its best on the gear that most people will be listening to it on.
dbr
Dooks-Fatberg
Yes but... when it was recorded and mastered and played back, the people who did the recording did so in the knowledge that it sounded as good as they could make it on the enjoyably "flawed" equipment of the day, not in the belief that it would one day achieve perfection by being replicated on flawless future tech.
I'm not saying that modern design, manufacture and measurement can't improve the listening experience, i'm just saying that it doesn't necessarily follow that audio nirvana lies in being the closest to totally transparent.
Edit: Well, I suppose it does if that's how you set the criteria and measure success against it without using your ears...