Your reference for "the absolute" sound?

Whoops, bass, not base.  A constant reminder of my not paying attention in grade school. 

Yeah, the absolute sound is live music, or any non-reproduced/non-regurgitated sound for that matter.  The crowd at the baseball game.  Kids playing.  The neighbor screaming outside.  Sidewalk buskers.  A lawnmower.  You can choose between hand-powered or gasoline-powered.   A Harley blatting by.  One of the best sounds I ever heard was a 1960's V-12 Ferrari careening its way down Sunset Blvd. in L.A.
When it comes to music, the best live sound I ever heard was courtesy of Herbert von Karajan and the Berlin Philharmonic at the Dorothy Chandler Pavilion in L.A.  I worked at Tower Classical Records at the time and the Polygram Rep laid a Founder's Circle ticket on me.  Then there are the jam sessions I've sat in with at various low rent bars & pizza joints.  Though my wife denies it, I like to call myself a fiddler.

edcyn, glad you mentioned the V-12 Ferrari sound.  I was lucky enough to have raced at Road America in Elhart Lake, Wi. and that sound is music to my sports car loving ears.  This has nothing to do with audio, but once at a Formula Ford and other events race at Road America there was a man that had a semi tractor trailer with a half dozen classic Ferrari's in it with his own crew to care for them.  And it seemed that the young lady on his arm was not likely his daughter. 

The absolute sound? Hmm. Hard one. But on the top of my personal list would be Sonny Rollins at the Bottom Line in Greenwich Village. He extended "Don't Stop the Carnival" for what seemed 15 minutes. I've been blessed to hear lots of great musicians, but that remains a highlight. oh yes, 15 feet from the great man's horn.

On the complete other end, when music quality was not the point, mosh diving at CBGB's with the DK's on the stage...

Elastic. Temporal...Points in time. Memory and Age dependent, etc. There isn’t one, even at the individual level.

Your reference for "the absolute" sound?

Absolute? No such thing. Absolutely.

Great question as it's all too easy to get lost in a sea of subjectivity when it comes to audio playback.

One good way might to record friends or family talking. I found the quality from a digital camera to be surprisingly good but I'm pretty sure a decent smartphone would be good enough.

If the playback through your system convinces you that it's them then that's a good reference. I know it's an old Hi-Fi cliche but speech is a surprisingly good way to check accuracy, at least midrange accuracy.

As a bonus a simple home recording can also avoid innumerable recording effects such as compression, delay, reverb etc that are usually present in most commercial offerings.

I get the feeling that 'straight' recording is seen as  taboo by most recording studios.

Apparently it's not what we want.

I've been to over a hundred rock, ska, and jazz concerts but only a few classical live performances. For me the absolute sound is my stereo. I've never been to a concert that sounds as good as an excellent recording on my home system. I figured out many years ago that attempting to make my stereo reproduce the sound at a live venue was not my goal. Why would I want to make my stereo sound worse?

When you are sitting in front of live performers your brain filters out the bad acoustics of the venue and you mentally position the musicians in the sound stage. You look at the acoustic bass player and you can see him/her play every note. It sounds wonderful. But try closing your eyes for 30 seconds and concentrate on the overall sound. You will quickly determine that it really doesn't sound very good. It's diffuse, mushy, and full of distracting acoustic reflections. If your stereo sounded just like that you would say that the recording was terrible and the equipment was crap. The proof here is that virtually no recordings are made with a stereo pair of microphones in a single position. When we try to duplicate your listening experience by recording from the same location as your ears the sound is lousy.

The exception is live orchestral music in a venue with world class acoustics where you are seated in an ideal location. I've never had this experience but I accept that this is a live musical standard that is worthy of reproduction. However, it is very rare that classical orchestras are recorded with a binaural setup with no EQ and no processing. If this is the "ideal" for live sound then why do nearly all orchestral recordings use multiple microphones and sophisticated mixing routines. Apparently the "absolute sound" can readily be improved upon.

To address the OP's question regarding surround sound, going clear back to the Quadraphonic days it was mostly a gimmick to sell more speakers and more expensive multichannel gear. It was cool the first time you heard it but it became distracting pretty fast. The best modern multichannel recordings attempt to recreate the ambiance of a live venue or to locate musical information around you to create an interesting effect. The worst concert I ever attended was Emerson, Lake, and Palmer where they had four huge stacks of speakers set up in the four corners of the venue. Besides being oppressively loud there were constant effects of the instruments spinning around the room as if on a racetrack and it sounded like a musical joke. It's the only concert in my life where I got up and walked out in the middle of the performance. I couldn't take it any more.

When I worked in an audio business and the goal was accurate sound, but  I realized that for many consumers their basis for what they wanted their system to sound like was a jukebox.  It seems that times may have not changed much since then. 

Using live performances as a reference involves evaluating the entire process from microphones to recording equipment to engineering choices to media encoding to my own playback system.

I have no choice but to trust that the engineers had an accurate monitoring system (speakers, amps, etc.) so the assembled track reflects what they heard while putting it together. And presumably, what is on the media is close to what the engineers heard when they assembled the track.

I only have control over what’s in my own playback system. So for purposes of evaluating my own system, I would seek an accurate rendition of whatever is on the media (or stream).

@whatjd

You already have it figured out.  You want to close your eyes and enjoy palpable images of instruments placed in front of you as they would be as if you were there.

You obviously love live music.  Trust your instincts and enjoy the journey.

The best sound I've heard, and use as a reference, were the live concerts I managed to attend over the years by the VPO in  the Vienna Musikverein.  Wonderful orchestra with magnificent strings,  superb venue. 

only the dead, deaf or unemotional can forget the first experience of an Italian V-12 at full howl.....I know I cant forget it....

and my reference jaded as it js by age and chemical memory, some say emotion is the real acoustic event. I have been chasing that on simplified stereo microphones into A2D converters amd high speed tape in a mobile rack for a while now...fun....

have fun
enjoy the music
chase the grail
repeat....

@whatjd , “When I worked in an audio business and the goal was accurate sound, but I realized that for many consumers their basis for what they wanted their system to sound like was a jukebox. It seems that times may have not changed much since then.”

That’s not true for me - I prefer a neutral sound.
That’s not true for me - I prefer a neutral sound.
That’s not true for me - I prefer a neutral sound.
That’s not true for me - I prefer a neutral sound.

Oh alright then! I admit it, it’s true.
I love that classic jukebox sound. Yes, the punch, the slam and oh those glorious colourful  mids...