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How real can recorded music sound?

Not trolling, for the record, but asking a sincere question. I've heard a few darn fine systems, but nothing even approaching the level of 'real' music. Nothing, for example, that would let me close my eyes and really believe a girl with a guitar was in the room. Nothing that would stand up to this challenge:

Perform a blind A/B where A is a recording (SACD, vinyl, anything goes) of a single accoustic instrument and vocalist played on the best possible system and made with the best possible recording methods with no limits on price or design. B is the actual musician, playing in the room, sitting in the same place that his/her 'image' exists in the recording.

Has anyone heard a system of such quality that listeners would actually think they were listening to B when in fact they were listening to the recording? Is it possible for this level of quality to exist in reproduced music?

I suspect that this is impossible because of the inherent limitations of recording itself and because we're using 2-speaker playback to re-create a sound image. Good systems do these things quite well, but I question if any system can or will ever be able to do them with absolute perfection.

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Topic - How real can recorded music sound? - twisty 16:24:56 10/22/05 (47)
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