At This Time Can We Recreate Full Range Live Music In The Home?

Wow, more of you are saying no than I would have expected. This tells me many have yet to hear a 1st class system. The best systems actually have better sound than you get at most concerts and easily match the volume levels if that is what you want. Everybody needs to go to a King Crimson concert then hear a top notch system play Monkey Mind. 

The answer is yes sort of. You can reproduce drums at a distance, on a stage. You can not reproduce sitting at the kit and wracking a cymbal 2 feet away from you. I play the drums now only as a hobby. I do not have the speed or coordination a great drummer needs. I have the time and that is about it. I do know what drums are supposed to sound like. Gavin Harrison has the best set of drums I have ever heard. Reproducing a live performance to the point where you can close your eyes and imagine you are at the concert in reality is quite possible. In many ways the quality of the sound can be much better than you would have at many if not most live concerts. This excludes classical concerts in well engineered halls or open venues. It is the very rare system that can do this not that they can not produce an enjoyable experience and expense has much less to do with this than you would think. 

@whart , Talking about Gavin Harrison, I have seen KC 3 ties in the last three years, twice with VIP tickets. We were entertained by Tony Levin the first time and Gavin the second prior to the concert. Anyway, their concert set up with the three drummers up front gives you a wonder live image which perfectly matches the DVD Radical Action to Unseat Monkey Mind. That DVD of that same concert transports me right back to the live show, right up to the 6th row center seats I had originally. It is the single most realistic recording of a live show I was actually at. I really believe Robert Fripp planned it this way. 

rh67, I have many excellent live recordings that replicate the live set up perfectly. But that is not the point. You do not have to match the live situation perfectly to have a "live like" experience. Studio recordings can be excellent but in many instances are surrealistic. 

No tablejockey, they do not. Not at all. You just have not heard one but, they are rare. What most people think are top notch systems are just a hap hazard collection of equipment strapped together and turned on. Very few systems are purposely designed and skillfully tuned in a room designed for music reproduction.

Raul, I politely disagree. There are countless instances where the sonic experience is better with a top notch system than at a live concert. The reverse is also true. It is easy to make a system project the acoustic energy of a real concert. Making it sound "real" is a much more difficult problem. Very few systems manage to do this. Many come close, many more are far away. But, this is not everyone's goal and all these systems present their owners with an enjoyable experience. Only nitwits like me drive ourselves crazy trying to make the ultimate subwoofer. Beats watching the news.
I have been chasing the "live" experience ever since That Allman Brothers Concert in 1970. I got my first pair of subwoofers in 1978, RH Labs, a big leap forward but, the crossovers were not so hot back then. Sometime I would inadvertently take a step backwards, crap! I guess that didn't work. Save up some more money. Maybe a little luck. Plucked a pair of JC 1's off display. Learn how to juggle signal processing. Make a few mistakes. Almost burned up a new loudspeaker.
Quite a trip. Everyone here has their own trip. As for a system that can present music like a live situation? You bet it can be done. There are no short cuts, no compromises, no WAF. You have to be ready to build a house and design a room specifically for music reproduction including using construction adhesive to glue all the blue board and subfloor down. You have to buy equipment capable of projecting the power of a live concert. If you are a Nine Inch Nails Buff it is going to be a ton of power.
You are not going to do it with LS3 5A's and an integrated amp. Not that these can't sound very nice, they do. But, they are not powerful enough to bring an orchestra into your room. Again, most sane people just want to listen to nice clean music. They do not have illusions of grandeur and they have better things to spend their money on. (a 911 and an Italian bicycle)

@phusis , I have been at every kind of live acoustic event you care to think of from string quartets in churches to Boston Symphony Hall where I have heard anything from Beethoven's 9th to Cassandra Wilson, to Dave Holland, McCoy Tyner, Ron Carter, Oz Noy and more at the Regatta Bar, to Tower of Power at Scullers, to Allison Krause at Meadowbrook, to Solo Elton John, The dead, Radiohead and Nine Inch Nails at the Garden. This is going to take several pages. I think you get the picture. 
The question was, "can this be done." My answer is yes it can. You can get the very same chills up your spine you get at a concert right at home.
I wish everyone could have the resources to do it. But, others prefer to buy a Summer Home or go on an insane vacation. Whatever. Most people simply do not care. For those who do there is light at the end of the tunnel.
@rauliruegas, That was very true in the old days. Layers of distortion were added at every step on the way to you. Even so there are many old classical recordings that can still raise the hair on the back of my neck. But, it took pop recordings a while to catch up. Now however, the signal is immediately digitized and additional distortion essentially stops until the conversion to analog which may not happen until you get the recording home. Maybe you and I are talking about different things. I am not saying that I can exactly mirror a live performance. I am saying that I can reach and frequently pass that level of musical involvement and pleasure. Creating a situation where if you closed your eyes you could easily envision yourself at a live performance. I have heard several systems reach this level of performance. I stick to my answer. It can be done.

@mglik , Studio recording is a crap shoot. Artists like Kate Bush use it as art. Others have no idea what they are doing. Painfully few studio recordings make me feel like I am at a live event. This does not mean they are not enjoyable. It is just a different experience like Herbie Hancock's Sextant. I prefer recordings where all the musicians are playing together and not spliced in here and there. I find the discontinuities bothersome. 

JBL-4345, it is not just about volume. It is very easy to make a system that goes loud. It is much more difficult to make a system that presents the music as an array of individual instruments and voices in space, each with its own special characteristics. 

jwillox, what you have to get is the first three Mahavishnu Orchestra Records, The Inner Mounting Flame, Birds of Fire and Visions of the Emerald Beyond as well as Billy's first solo album, Spectrum. These predate Warning by at least a decade when Billy was young and explosive. The George Duke, Billy Cobham Band Live in Europe is another good one.