And, lets not forget, wrt vinyl, advances in cartridges and stylus only seem to dig more and more out of the grooves, so we can’t even really know what all is there to begin with.
That is a good point, and extends not just to vinyl. I have often discussed the issue with audiophile friends where we marveled at what we heard from top systems with their fantastic resolution. We concluded that, certainly when it comes to older recordings, probably the recording engineers did not even know what is on the recording because they did not have the equipment and speakers to even hear in the studio just how much was captured, compared to the enormous resolution that can be heard on modern systems.
If that is the case, how can you even talk about the original "intent" of the recording?