The real thing is also a recording, it's the memory of the music and the playing skill recorded in the violinist's mind, with the musician and his violin as the playback device rather than a speaker. You prefer the acoustic qualities of one type of playback device over the other, but that doesn't make it any more or less "real" for any commonly accepted definition of "real".
...I honestly can't tell if you are serious. Your argument is basically that everything is real, because sound coming from the speakers is no less real than the sound coming from an actual violin. Should I have used a term "artificial" then? Just like artificial diamonds are not the same as real diamonds, artificial sounds produced by a speaker are not the same as sounds made by a real violin. Like someone else said - the difference is the same as there is between attending a concert and sitting in your room listening to a CD. You could even argue that with a sufficiently advanced audio system, the aural experience is exactly the same, so technically they are the same. And that would be true, if humans were robots - but we experience a whole set of irrational emotions,and that's why a lot of people prefer being at a concert to listening to a recording, having real diamonds instead of mass-produced ones, or using actual sugar instead of sweeteners - even if the sensory experience produced is no "more or less "real" for any commonly accepted definition of "real". And that's why I would personally prefer having an actual combustion of fuel to be producing sounds in my car, instead of the speaker system , thank you.
Hey, preferring some playback devices because of your cultural background is just as valid as preferring some of them because they have higher pitches. You like what you like. But they're all "real".
Artificial doesn't make sense here because music is manmade to begin with. I don't think it would make sense to call an artisanal handmade telephone any less artificial than your factory-stamped Cisco IP phone. Diamonds are naturally occuring, so there is actually a distinction there. As the manufacturing process matures, that distinction will remain, but 99% of people just won't care. Like with salt.
