[1] I guess you will never convince me that recorded music has clarity equal to live, or that [2] an engineer's job doesn't affect that clarity.
2. Certainly an aspect of the engineer's job is clarity, over which the engineer can exercise enormous control, far more control than can the musician. Therefore ...
1. And here we have it, the central issue with all your threads! You have made observations and then created a logical theory (or set of theories) to explain those observations. To you, those observations are reality and therefore sacrosanct, you "will never" be convinced of anything which doesn't obviously conform to your observations or explanations of them. This puts you firmly in the camp of the hardcore audiophiles, who are forced into espousing more and more ludicrous theories (relative to the known science) in order to defend the sanctity of their observations. The whole point of science is to try and separate the truth of reality from the everyday observations/assumptions of reality. Despite appearances/assumptions, the earth is not flat, it's not the centre of the universe, the fundamental elements of the universe are not fire, water, air and earth, etc. In fact, the truth of reality (at least as science currently understands it) so utterly contradicts everyday observations/assumptions that the two main theories which describe the universe are almost impossible to even imagine! I'm not saying that the reality of sound science is as utterly bizarre and contradictory to everyday observation/assumption as say Quantum Mechanics but you have to be open to the possibility of at least some differences. If, before you even know all the factors, you state that you will never be convinced, then by definition you are eschewing science. You are not going to get the answers you want here and you'd be much better of asking your questions in one of the extremist audiophile forums!
You stated "I guess", which potentially leaves the door open a crack that you can be convinced, on that basis I'll respond to your point and see if we can get anywhere. The concept of "clarity" may appear on the surface to be a simple one but in reality it isn't. In fact, your apparent assertions of clarity can be challenged even in terms of your own internal logic, as well as in terms of the actual reality/science which includes factors beyond your observations/assumptions! Even just sticking to music observation (without considering sound science), clarity is not so simple, it has a number of different levels, some of which require a deliberate lack of clarity! For example, typically in a symphony orchestra we do not want to hear 18 clearly defined individual 1st violinists, we typically want a lack of clarity which results in those 18 violinists being perceived as essentially a single musical entity (the first violin section). However, we would typically want clarity between the first violin section and the other string sections. Even in the case of divisi 1st violins we're still not after clarity, just maybe an additional level of clarity; two clear musical entities (of 9 violinists each) rather than one of 18. Sometimes of course we do want an individual 1st violinist to have particular clarity (EG. The leader). Clarity is therefore superficially easy to define musically, it's the level of detail and separation of the individual musical entities. However, look beyond the superficial, even just in musical terms and clarity is not so easy because the individual musical entities are not static, they combine, divide and sub-divide, from the level of the entire orchestra all the way down, on occasion, to single musicians within the orchestra. Logically, even from a purely musical perspective, one wouldn't want perfect clarity of every individual musician within the orchestra all the time. Clarity is therefore referenced against what "one would want", which is effectively entirely subjective. From an audio engineering perspective, we've not only got these same musical issues of clarity but also a whole bunch of additional issues caused by equipment practicalities, sound science and psycho-acoustics/perception. Psycho-acoustics is a big one because not only in practise is it usually the most, or one of the most profound factors at play but because it's typically completely ignored/eliminated by audiophiles (on the grounds that observation is reality and therefore that psycho-acoustics in effect does not exist)! Let's look at reality though, if we're sitting in a concert hall, say 20m from a violinist we can hear incredibly subtle nuances in the fiction of a horse's tail being dragged against a string. At the same time, we're completely unaware of the (relatively) massive sound of a powerful muscle thumping and blood being forced around the body just a few centimetres or millimetres from our ears. It doesn't take a pHd to realise there must be some autonomous (sub-conscious) process/es at work which results in a perception of reality which differs significantly from actual reality. Beyond the obvious heartbeat, perception is altering reality in many other respects. For example, if we are concentrating on our violinist 20m away, depending on the hall acoustics, we are in reality hearing relatively little of the direct sound the violinist is creating, mostly we are hearing reflections of the violinist's sound. Stick a mic in that position and we'll pick up more of that reality, a recording which lacks clarity due to too much reflections (reverb) relative to the direct sound. A problem which is significantly less obvious if we're actually there in a live situation because if we concentrate on the violinist our brain will filter out some of that reverb and manufacture a greater clarity than exists in reality. The obvious riposte to this is; why, when listening to the recording with too much reverb, doesn't our brain do the same as the live situation and filter some of it out? The answer is that we're listening to a recording, not in the live situation. What we might wish to believe (that we're in the concert hall) is contradicted by our other senses, plus other biases arising from the live situation and even by the audio reality itself. With regards to the latter: We have two point sources of sound production (speakers) which are trying to represent the acoustic information which is arriving from all directions (in the live situation) and those two point sources are also creating significant reflections in your listening environment (say a living room), reflections which conflict with the desired reproduced reality. Even with perfect transducers (mics and speakers), the reproduced acoustic reality would be a concert hall inside a living room, which of course doesn't and can't exist and is a fundamental conflict.
Added to other weaknesses: In the stereo illusion, weaknesses in transducers, perceptual differences induced by the other senses, conflicts with the other senses and different biases (expectation bias, etc.) which affect perception, it's obvious that an audio recording can only ever be an approximation of a live gig, an approximation which at best may fool some. Typically, as with audiophiles, you are making incorrect assumptions and concentrating in the wrong areas. You've mentioned the dynamic range/resolution of digital audio but that's a complete red herring! Although it might not appear intuitive, digital audio has infinite resolution (even at 16bit) and is capable of a dynamic range which not only far exceeds the ear but far exceeds the capabilities of transducers to record or reproduce, so even if your ears were in theory capable of hearing it, you still wouldn't be able to hear what your sound system is not producing!
I don't have time to deal just now with what musicians hear, what the differences are between what an engineer hears and some of the holes completely missing from your theory/ies. Although there are a few hints above, if you care to read it carefully. Are we getting anywhere or am I wasting my time?
G