Hello Karri,
You said: "the goal is successful
perceptual recreation". This is absolutely true, but the question is: recreation of what?
Stereo - two channels of information - are simply not adequate to capture and reproduce anything resembling the "real" sound field that might exist in live performances. I spend many pages of my book "Sound Reproduction" explaining that only multichannel schemes can even approximate that.
Stereo recordings are mixed and artistically tweaked while listening to two (non-standard) loudspeakers in (non-standard) control rooms. Everything we hear, starting with the basic timbre of the sounds through the imaging and sound stage are manipulated to sound good at the point of creation. Since none of this is standardized, recordings vary enormously, and none of them are "real". The best that can be done is to convey a few strong clues to what might be real. The rest is in the mind of the listener. In this situation the recreation that we seek is the sound the artists and recording engineer heard in the control room - that is the "original performance", but we don't know what it was.
Of course, adventurous audiophiles go further, trying to inject some of the missing information. Over the years a semi-infinite variety of loudspeaker designs, electronic manipulators and acoustical devices have been created to try to fill the void between what is in the stereo signal and what the listener would really like to hear. All succeed and fail to varying degrees because the original stereo system is so seriously deficient in directional and spatial information. The movie industry realized the importance of spatial information decades ago - the latest "immersive" audio systems have channel counts ranging up to 64 - not two. I have heard music in a couple of these systems and it is stupendously realistic - you can stand up and walk around as if you were in a concert hall or cathedral. The music industry has demonstrated that it is interested only in delivering a melody, lyrics and a foot tapping rhythm. All else is optional, and less than is needed to generate a "successful perceptual recreation" of a live performance. The public at large seems not to care much, leaving those of us who do care out in the cold.
My recent lecture covers some of this, addressing the recording industry:
My recent paper in the Journal of the Audio Engineering Society addresses the lack of meaningful standardization in the audio and movie industry - go to aes.org, click on Publications then "open access" and type in my name. The 30-page paper is a free download to anybody.
Cheers, Floyd