Saying so does not make it so.
What is your definition of "natural"?
What is your definition of "accurate"?
'Natural' and "Accurate' are
exactly the same thing as I described earlier. Synonymous in every way. If its not accurate its not natural and if not natural
certainly not accurate. What we cannot do is be truthful to the musical event. That is because whatever it was, the
recording is all we have. But we
can be truthful to that, so however the recording is, the reproduction will be as true to the recording as possible if its 'accurate'
or 'natural'.
Put another way, you are hobbling yourself for no good reason if you see a distinction between these two terms.
BTW
there are exactly zero designers of audio equipment that do not rely on measurements. They all use Voltmeters for example. I'm pretty sure all of them have an oscilloscope and a signal generator. The word 'measurements' has sadly become a word that inspires a knee-jerk reaction. No doubt a lot of this has to do with so-called 'objectivists' that discount the subjective experience and think nothing is real if its only anecdote. That's exactly the same kind of mistake the subjectivist camp makes when it discounts measurements. The truth lies somewhere between as Daniel von Recklinghausen stated!!
Put another way its possible to use engineering to design equipment that obeys the rules of human hearing just as its possible to design equipment that gets you good numbers on a spec sheet. That is what Vladimir was up to. Its also possible to design equipment that gets you good specs on paper and also obey human hearing rules. Its that last bit that a lot of people don't seem to understand. When it has good specs and also obeys human hearing rules then it will be both accurate and natural.
I am sure you can find counter examples, as you have. What I meant more generally is that many people who listen to acoustical non-amplified music do choose a variety of systems, not just the typical SET driven high sensitivity speakers.
Like ones that actually can play the sound pressures of a real orchestra without sounding loud
I'm not referring to those types of "modest" systems.
The inconvenient truth is that there is absolutely no correlation between musical tastes and experience and the choice of systems.
This is because the rules of human hearing are
universal across the entire population of the planet. What we do with those rules is another matter; there's no accounting for taste.
That same stereo does not play classical very well. One of those people even told me he won't play classical music as it doesn't sound very good on his stereo.
Then something is dreadfully wrong with it and it can't play rock very well either (or he's not figured out that there's really big differences in recording quality from label to label and just has bad classical recordings...).
Electronics don't have taste and
no designer has ever figured out how to make any kind of electronics (including loudspeakers) favor a certain musical genre. The idea that a speaker like the JBL L100 is good for rock is 100% myth. They play classical just as well (or badly, depending on your perspective). Because musicians all share the same rules of human hearing like the rest of us, they tend to spread the musical message over the same band of frequencies in exactly the same way whether death metal or classical.
BTW you
can record an electric guitar in a way that sounds natural and accurate or you can record it so it doesn't. The natural sound of it in a recording will sound like the musician is playing the electric guitar in front of you. As a hint, the way to do this is to not place the mic directly in front of the guitar cabinet's driver but instead get back about as far as you might if you were actually there listening to him play. And for heaven's sake use a decent microphone?? You aren't going to get it right with a Shure SM57. Neumanns work very well for this purpose! There's no need for cheap mics in a recording studio unless you're looking to create an effect.
