As it happens I'm listening to Toscanini's 1949 Eroica in the latest BMG
remastering, and it is stupefying!  It's the funeral march now playing, and
it's a remarkable rejuvenation of such an old recording.  But I don't think
I entirely agree with your premise.  Too much is dependent on one's aural
imagination -- a little bit like listening to a Bach partita for solo
violin, where your mind supplies the implied bass notes.

It's a matter of indifference to me about the technical quality, although
I do enjoy a triumph such as these Toscanini remasterings.  But I grew up
with 78 rpm jazz records, scratchy and clicks in the sound and loved every
second of it.  I still do.

Bill S