> In fact if the Sgt Pepper recording that sounds so right to you is in stereo (which has been the default version since 1968), you yourself aren't listening to the original canonical one.

Just to add for neophytes-- audio improvements over the past 100 years have no discernible relationship to the pace or quality of video improvements.

I say this because at least in the U.S. it is a highly visual culture. If you look at leaps from black and white to color to digital to hidef to 4k, etc. (and especially increasing framerate), you get a sense of monumental improvements in quality. New shit looks so good that the old shit is ruined now because it looks blurry by comparison and can even be pain-inducing to watch.

So one might think, "Gee, stuff in stereo must be twice as good as old shit in mono!" But even paxys example of Sgt Pepper isn't pedantry. It's not just that mono versions are the canonical ones that the band actually help mix and approve. It's that they sound great. A listener doesn't have to do the aural version of "squinting" to hear what the Beatles were doing in that album.