It has become a cliche that improving playback sound is like having a clearer 'window' onto the recording, but, that remains a very apt analogy - sorry!! Achieving convincing, realistic recreation of a recorded musical event requires that the listener focuses only on the scene beyond the window - the latter representing the mechanism of the playback system, and the former being the actual 'data' encoded on the recording. A window that is dirty to some degree, or that distorts the image of what is on the other side can be largely ignored depending upon one's mood, and especially if the landscape beyond is already well known ... but removing the glass from that window, suddenly, will be quite noticeable, or dramatic, or even an epiphany ...
If an individual is content to always observe the world through that lesser window, oblivious to its effect, then that's fine - but if one were to be exposed to the "reality" beyond the imperfect glass barricade, then a burning desire to never be aware of that window lessening the impact of what one is seeing will form in many people. That it is impossible to actually eliminate the window may be part of the deal - you always require a playback system to experience recorded music - but your awareness of any filtering effect should be as close to zero as possible.
Thus, the exercise is to make the window as "perfect" as possible. And there are many ads of window cleaners where the punchline is that a person walks into the glass, not picking there is an "illusion" of nothing being in his way ... this is what one is after in audio - and, fortunately, it's very achievable ...
A large part of the "battle" in getting the glass 'transparent' enough is not understanding what audible artifacts are due to the glass, not realising that supposedly bad recordings, say, come across that way because the mind is struggling to make sense of the fine detail beyond the imperfect pane - many times it's easier to give up, mentally, and simply decide that the music is so flawed in the recording that nothing can be done about it ... but, nothing could be further from the truth ...
And so a key first step is learning to recognise what the imperfect window is doing to what you're perceiving: luckily, in the visual area everyone can easily adjust the focus of their eyes so that they "look" at the dirt on the window, the scene beyond is blurred out. People can use various ways, intuitive most of the time, to register what's wrong with the glass, being able to completely ignore what is actually seen through the pane - and then clean up and correct the window. Unfortunately, in the aural area, most people are not so well attuned to what's going on, and haven't learnt to switch, shift their focus on the sounds in what they hear.
One needs to be able to "see" the dirt in the playback, and know it's not part of the recording, the scene beyond, itself. This can be learnt, and once acquired, like riding a bike, never goes away. Then, you will motivated to fix the problem, and ,be far better equipped to make the right moves in sorting things out ...
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