07-14-12: BryoncunninghamAs in the Neutrality thread of 2009, I am in complete agreement with Bryon's comments and analysis, as summed up nicely in these two paragraphs. His well constructed analysis seems to me to be self-evident.
In spite of the fact that the live event and the recording are, to some extent, Unknowns, many audiophiles believe they can reasonably speculate about them. Those speculations are, of course, uncertain. But their uncertainty doesn't mean that they are altogether unreliable. Speculations about accuracy become more reliable through experience, either experience with live music or experience with playback systems.
When audiophiles form judgments about the accuracy of a recording or the accuracy of a system, they are invariably judgments about the degree of audible inaccuracies. And judgments about the degree of audible inaccuracies are, by definition, judgments about neutrality.
Best regards,
-- Al