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@mrdecibel 

All the best to you as well.  
I do have a pair of headphones. Probably not the quality of yours. 
I don’t listen to them much anymore.

. . . I remember once in the late '90s I had the house to myself for a few days and I did a rare sampling of a cannabis product and then I put on Lou Reed/Rock And Roll Animal and cranked it way up until I thought the speakers might explode as it  played through the guitar intro track to Sweet Jane and then Sweet Jane, and before Heroin had completely played through, I thought, "I've finally got it."  It was a great feeling. . . .

@mrdecibel 

What I find the engineers, producers and the artists do right, and this requires a very fine ear, is the ability to take each individual track (studio recordings specifically) and synchronize it all, resembling each performer playing live, together, in sync....

Ah, but that’s the complete opposite of what Mercury did for the Living Presence series!

When you have a full orchestra of say 100 players, it is impossible to individually place a microphone for each player.  Mercury took the opposite approach and just used three microphones in a line, for left, centre and right.  These were mixed down for stereo records and later for CDs by adding the centre signal to both left and right channels.  Much later, their SACD releases contained all three original channels but as DSD rather than PCM.  (When I play the SACDs, my preprocessor adds the centre channel to left and right because I chose not to use a centre speaker)

Once Mercury had the microphones set up and the recording equipment (either tape or film) set for maximum volume, they did no further mixing or synchronisation.  The conductor and orchestra did the rest, with a contribution from the venue!

So the recording is an unadulterated version of a real performance from a listening point just back and slightly above the conductor.  Regular concert goers quickly learn what a real unadulterated orchestra sounds like in a real acoustic.  The recording engineers for Mercury, and these days for 2L, don’t interfere in any way with the artistry of the performance, once they have the equipment working properly!

I very nearly attended a Mercury original performance in 1962, when to quote Mercury’s notes, "Antal Dorati ... electrified a capacity audience at London’s Royal Festival Hall with a stunning performance of Bartok’s Bluebeard’s Castle." which was sung in Hungarian.  I still remember the soprano Olga Szonyi cutting through the entire orchestra towards the agonising end.  Mercury shortly afterwards hired the Watford Town Hall for a recorded re-run, using 35-mm film as the sound medium.

This performance has just been re-released (again) in March 2025 ...

@Richardbrand

+1 

I find the best recordings are done this way. They get the venue / ambience correct. Like you are in attendance. 

I was reading an album cover recently... the notes went on and on about was a great recording this was, the great hall it was recorded in and how it captures the ambience and hall so well. I started listening... it was terrible... there was no ambiance. I went back to the notes and read on... there were diagrams how they erected partitions between individual and small groups and placed microphones. I don’t know what these idiots were smoking... this was exactly the opposite of what they were advertising. 

On the other hand one of my favorite albums is by Joe Jackson (not classical) Body and Soul. He went out looking for a venue that would be part of the recordings... found an all wood stage. I can’t remember the rest of the details...I think minimally miked.  But from the first notes you hear the venue as an integral part of the performance it sounds like you are in the audience... with exceptional sonics. 

@richardbrand, as this thread is based on Mercury recordings, and classical for that matter, I likely should not have said anything at all, as I totally agree and concur with everything you said. "Multi Track" recordings are what I was referring to, as I listen to and have been involved with multi track recording (studio stuff). Sorry, I should have specified that.....my bad