The answer is whatever you want it to be. Often there is no such thing as truth, because the artist's intent never existed in the physical world. (Though there

The answer is whatever you want it to be. Often there is no such thing as truth, because the artist's intent never existed in the physical world. (Though there is the recording studio's mixing room where the artist listened to and signed off on the final master.) My personal aim is to reproduce the artist's intent faithfully AND to satisfy our own preferences, without losing sight of where the former ends and the latter begins.