The real truth about recordings

I would say that the listener's choice of speaker and other components may be comparable to the choice of where in a concert hall the listener sits/where the microphones are placed. 

Not at all ...

You forgot that  all components and the speakers sound such and such in SPECIFIC  room acoustic conditions... ( acoustic material content, geometry, size, treatments and acoustic devices  etc no room sound the same at all  and serve speskers in the same way )

And you forgot how the electronic design gear choices will modify the sound...

Of course, the more neutral the listening room/speaker interface, the closer the system will be to reproducing

 No room is neutral... And no speakers sound the same if we change room parameters... Neutral is a relative convenient word we use for specific ears/brain experience of ONE owner... It will not be neutral on the same level for another users  even in the same room ...

There is a strong similarity between recordings and photographs, as a means of artistic expression. They both are based on a real experience, and both become different by virtue of the media they are expressed in.

Each reproduction has a filter, we may like our choice of filters but I suppose it’s like hamburgers. Lots of range of enjoyment but there are still all hamburgers. Thus there’s no real thing to reproduce, just a version. Yet there’s something brand new you should try, and it’s odd this hasn’t been marketed to audiophiles, but atmos music. Think of all those tracks. Sounds, interactions. They all have to basically be pushed to mono. Yeah even stereo is pretty much mono with tricks to give illusions of space, namely lots of reverb. Atmos is object oriented. There is no mix. It’s computed based on your setup. Reverb is set by your configuration You can have 40 speakers. The mixer just says where things go in a 3d space. For me it’s what remastering kind of implies. Not tidying a stereo mix but opening each part of the recording to be heard in a new way.