If you were serious about sound you would...

@wolf_garcia I agree with you about live sound I’ve done it for many decades and it ruined live concerts mostly I only go to one place to listen to music, the Smith center in Las Vegas it sounds great and I only go when big jazz acts are there they can afford to hire great mixers. Of course you wouldn’t buy 100s of SSL preamps or a full board they sell 2 channel rack mount channels you don’t even need Pro Tools I only add Pro Tools because most every studio uses it to record. It surprisingly doesn’t take much to copy a top studio when you are only using stereo. The money is spent at the studio buying microphones, mixers and they spend a lot of money on the listening room, the speakers are usually not as expensive as good audiophile speakers but that isn’t the important thing.

If you looked through your favorite albums and looked at the most common studio they were recorded at, probably Capitol Records wouldn’t it would be smart to copy their playback equipment (they use Neve not SSL by the way) they mix analog and then record to Pro Tools at 192k. They have spent the money so you don’t have to. just copy the very good preamps top studios use and listen on top studio standard speakers someone mentioned JBLs, ya great this will get you accurate sound. If you want amazing wow sound put in 4 subs like I have and listen to the exhibition of sound but don’t say it’s audiophile or accurate. Hope that’s clear, I’m really sorry I haven’t been able to make my point very well, or this group is unwilling to accept it’s simplicity, I’m not sure.

...thought I’d provide / share my squeaky clean listening update … I’m lovin’ It!

( "....It had gone too far when the McD Synthdrome had spread to the audiodefiled immunity...Nothing could be done to curtail the use of ultrasonic record cleaning fluids as a ’chaser’ for hallucinogens mixed into ’adult beverages’ in the paltry few ’b&m, pro-sound dealers’....

All one had to do to find this illicit activity was to follow to the source the unrestrained ’giggling’ into the back area of said store.

The sight of a ’defiled ProAudChaserChooser’ using the fluids in a bidet wash unit to ’anoint their vinyls’ was Not a sight to be put into the gay discplays in a storefront window...." *

* - Excerpt from the "Now We Are InSync’ed" Manifesto, marked up with pink "Barbaberbe’ highlighters and held up with pinheads."

I really don't care about reproducing the exact sound of the recording equipment since 80% of my 2k+ collection of older vinyl is far from sounding perfect to my ears. In fact about 50% sounds mediocre to poor. Hence I have both a Loki Max and a Puffin in my system. Puffin for secondary TT, Max for everything digital. Primary TT is only pure unaltered sound source on which I only play the 20% of my vinyl that meets my ears criteria as is. Recording quality is a crapshoot. Not so much poor equipment, but poor engineering and mastering. Why not tweaking their deficiencies.  

And of course, perfect audio equipment, studio or home kind, will never sound to their full potential unless installed in a properly built and setup listening room. 

"If you were serious about sound you would..."

...post over 20000 times in a hifi forum.  Thank you!

@mapman Great answer, but do you care about the most accurate sound or do you care about your enjoyment of music accurate sound be damned? Obviously you have given your expertise to the audiophile world which all around here appreciate. One of those branches is objective the other is subjective, your objective experience and commitment to audio is valuable but to me your subjective commitment to audio is only valuable is your ideas line up to my subjective ideas promoting confirmation bias something only the marketing department of audio manufactures need. I would really like your answer I don't think there is a right or wrong answer.