as we can see in our world today, reality is reality, but each person's belief of what is reality can be different, dreadfully, woefully different - musically for example, a person who goes to live springsteen performances at the meadowlands has a totally different take on reality of music than a season ticket holder to the boston symphony...
so asking 'how much reality one needs out of their hifi' is a lost cause, an exercise in futility
furthermore, recordings are made with substantial imperfections and losses, and then the reproduction of the recordings incur further losses... some good systems can sometimes add some 'enhancements' to deliver a more pleasing illusion to the listener in the course of reproduction (e.g. vacuum tube distortion), such is the subjectivity in this pursuit in working with biomechanics of our hearing and our tastes
so one can say audiophiles are about 'the sound'... that wouldn't be totally wrong... but smart and seasoned audiophiles are about the sound in service of delivering beautiful, engaging musical experiences...
...short of that, we are playing games with semantics, not having a discussion of the substance of the pursuit
