Im sort of shocked no one has mentioned three companies who specialized in this and achieved some commerical success: Telarc and the modern ioteraction of Telarc: Five Four Productions. This was Michael Bishop (chief engineer) who won more grammies for high resolution recording thatn jsut about anyone. He has many many incredible recordings in his catalog, such as Hiromi, and Eric Bibb- two that stick out to me as incredibly realistic. Just go to Discogs and search for Michael Bishops
Another David Cheske, he used a SOundField mic for many years and did live single mic SoundField recordings of major orcehstras and organists in famous rooms. He was about capturing he ambience and experiecne of the performance.
George Masenburg, a few mentioned his Little Feat recording but I think all of them were great. He also did NIckel Creek, and quite a number of other bands- also recordng LInda Ronstadt with Nelson Riddle Orchestra. Extra ordinary. He hated colored mics and preamps, and used the most neutral gear possible so his recordings represent clarity and realism.
Al Schmidt: He was a engineers engineer and recorded many great artists at Capitol such as Diana Krall and Jane Monheit. He would spend days on mic placement and had perhaps one of the best rooms in LA to use all the time: Studio A at Capitol. It had Nat King Coles Piano in it and Nelsn Riddles famous chair and bandstand.
Another great: Mark Waldrep, and amazng engineer and the guy behind Real HD AUDIO. I met him on Jennifer Warnes recording and loaned him a mic. He's recorded an enormous catalog of outstanding music. Find him on realhd-audio.com
Then Direct to Disc, refined and developed by Doug Sax and Bill Schnee. These guys started Sheffield Labs and did some of the most realistic recordings ever. Thelma Huston and Lincoln Mayorga, wow.. Bill also recorded quite a few other killer sounding records, Steely Dan among them. Bill was someone that people called to get a GREAT sound.
Search for the great engineers above to find huge back catalogs of great recordings. Recording [tracking+mixing] Engineers are the ones most responsible for a great recording as Musicians are focused on the pereformance, their intruments, not whats happening in the control room. There were a few musicans who could do both, Alan Parsons comes to mind, but its a short list.
Brad
Lone Mountain/ATC