Re: CRI
"professionally & objectively prepared CRI"
If only it were so.
Cri ratings should be taken with several pounds of salt. Or so I was told in a seminar I took on light and color a couple of years ago. There is no scientific test for CRI based on something like distribution of wavelengths included in the output of the source in question. The CRI rating is developed by the manufacturer of the light source, usually by lighting some color samples with a few known sources in comparison with the source in question and inviting anyone they want (employees, friends, folks off the street) to to come in and rate the source. No potential conflict of interest there.
How well a light source renders color will depend on the surface you are looking at and what wavelengths the surface will reflect and the extent to which those wavelengths are present in the output of the source. A given source may do a good job rendering some colors and a poor job with others. And color rendering without full spectrum light can get very complicated very fast. Is a given green car perceived as green because it is reflecting the green wavelengths or the yellow and blue wavelengths?
An incandescent lamp is a black body radiator, and as such, is a full spectrum source (i.e., there is output all across the spectrum). The color temperature (2800-3200K) is low compared to sunlight (5400K)which explains the low output in the blue end of the spectrum. White LEDs, HID lamps, flourescent lamps, etc., are not full spectrum light sources. They are "missing" some wavelenghts in their output. Your eyes are tricked into thinking the output is "white" because of how our eyes work. But if you are looking at something that refects mostly wavelengths that the led or phospher isn't producing, the color won't look right. If the LED manufacturers could make a more complicated phospher blend, they could fill in some of the missing parts of the spectrum and have an LED version of those "kitchen/bath" flourescent lights that do a better job of color rendering.
I don't know if lack of full spectrum light would effect depth perception though. If it did, you would think cities with Sodium vapor street lights would have noticed an increase in accidents.