When I think about it, I own hardly any records of the type that were likely made with just stereo mics in a room, which is the one way, if done right that would have any claim of being something like a "real sound stage." I own plenty of acoustic jazz recordings, but even those ones which seem to be made with an accent on realism are all likely made with many mics, each closer to the instrument and then, even if no compression, reverb, etc was used for processing and even if everything is mixed live to stereo, there's still mixing going on and decisions made on individual levels, panning etc. It seems to me that very little music outside of maybe the classical world and various field recordings are made in such a way that they're only stereo mics used and that the space where the recording is made is reproduced as faithfully as possible. I have actually heard a few jazz recordings that preport to have been recorded this way... so called "audiophile recordings" and they do sound like they have more of that room ambience to me, but at the expense of the clarity and precision of individual instruments. I tend to feel that this approach is as much of a marketing thing, as it anything else as I think that recordings by the likes of ECM, Blue Note and the like are great (and kind of the gold standard for acoustic jazz recording) and I know that they were recorded more elaborately with multiple mics as you can see that from photos in of the recording sessions...
I'm not much of a purist it seems and it's a good thing, because besides jazz I listen to a lot of rock/pop type music that isn't recorded at all naturalisticly. Some of that music though really does seem to be recorded with a lot of care and even if instruments were recorded separately in different spaces, the way that everything is stitched together seems to me to create a real sense of depth. One that to me is far more convincing than "cardboard cutouts," but then again, my ears haven't been been honed by the experience of listening to lots of audiophile classical recordings. I actually feel that the way that engineers and producers choose to deal with issues of creating that "artificial space" is big part of what makes the kinds of records that they contribute to so interesting. There are many flavors of those kinds of manufactured acoustical spaces and their contributions help to give those records the particular flavor that each one of them has...
