Surely I understand this need of having "best sound", but it also awakes question about standard of what really is this so called best sound. Some music styles, in deed, people are so obsessed about idea that listener must hear everything with utmost clarity and it has become synonymous with "good sound" or "making it right". However, I wouldn't agree, and I don't think most people really do.
A lot of music styles abandoned necessity of "best fidelity" or accurate volume balances of instruments, etc. For long vast majority of music has been done "wrong" from perspective of typical acoustic orchestral music. Suddenly drums no longer sounded like acoustic drums naturally do. Or guitars are distorted etc and such typicalities nobody even questions. But ask people of new-music orchestra drive their violins through big amps, and I'm sure you find total opposition, except few isolated cases here and there. While many in experimental music indeed seem to insist that whatever supposedly unconventional stuff they do, it must follow the state-of-art high fidelity recording style and it must be presented as if person was sitting in concert hall audience, in exact middle of audience.
To do it wrong, could be to make it appear as if you were listening performance under the grand piano. What could be good place to be, when it's all wrong and in utmost imbalance.
There is one topic of... was it unusual recording techniques & situations? Mentioned some conceptual french art music, where saxophone was being played in house where different rooms were mic'ed. You wouldn't listen the same-old close up jazz jam, but merely resonance of the house. Distant honks what lives in surroundings. And while "music" itself wasn't anything too exciting, idea to approach it somehow differently contributed a lot. If someone mentioned, there's CD made of abstract orchestral music recorded from ventilation system of venue. I'd check that out any day. Would it be good? Who knows. We have probably yet to hear someone give it a try, while everybody repeats the right ways.
