I think that recording Keith posted is important. It's a good recording on technical aspects. Noise? fine. Distortion? None I could detect. Frequency range? Bottom and top end present. Balance and blend? Worked for me.
So from a technical viewpoint, knowing how it was recorded it scores high. The trouble is, it just doesn't sound like we expect from a recording. If you expand to stereo recording in a church or a choir or small ensemble, they do quite badly - noise? often human noises, the occasional sniff, or cough from the live audience, maybe even a faint car driving pass. Distortion? No - clean. Frequency range? Sometimes a bit limited by the building, maybe a little missing from the bottom and a bit dull in areas where the building fought back. Balance and blend - pretty good, and isn't the building nice?
In a church recording we don't consider the problems as faults, but in a contemporary recording we do. Context makes your brain think something is wrong, because it isn't clean, clinical, edited, balanced, tweaked and repaired. Which is more real? That's a great question. The leap from mono to stereo is a great improvement but then things change rapidly.