Well, we can't just say 'original = intent'. The original artists presumably did the best job of expressing their intent as far as possible in the medium at the time, but that doesn't mean that this necessarily is the best expression of their intent ever.
It's like saying you can only watch the Simpsons with the exact late 1980s / early 1990s ads that they originally aired with, and everything else is sacrilege.
But without asking them it's pure conjecture. I don't think trying to retcon the best expression of their intent needs to be used to justify this project, either. Sometimes it's fun to see if you can build an improvement on what exists, even if it's a vehicle for learning about DSP or whatever domain the learner is in.
It's like saying you can only watch the Simpsons with the exact late 1980s / early 1990s ads that they originally aired with, and everything else is sacrilege.