I find that using 'live performance' or 'live music' as a benchmark is foolish. There are lots of venues where chamber music sounds atrocious, because of the acoustics, the woman in the taffeta dress three seats away who can't sit still, and the guy with the sniffles behind you. For rock or jazz music in a club, there is either the electronics, the acoustics, the fact that this is the 14th time in 7 days the band is playing the same thing, or what have you. If you are in a stadium-like venue, yeah... whatever...
What makes a live performance good for me is when the performers get into it. Then I can live with the taffeta dress, the smoke, the chair leg scraping, the bad acoustics, etc. Having seen The Bad Plus at the Blue Note is one of the highlights of my "live music" career. However, this had nothing to do with the sound quality, the "inner detail", the "air", the "timbral accuracy", or some of the usual audiophile terms. I had excellent seats to see the guys play their first set in Tokyo. It was great. They had a ball, and so did I.
For me, the "air" which is important is the decay of musical instruments or the decay of a real echo in a space (like the decay of organ, or voices, in Arvo Part's music recorded in a cathedral). I agree with the earlier point about miking. Good miking makes a recorded performance more detailed than a live performance (very rarely have I been close enough to hear a cellist breathe the way I can hear Peter Wispelwey breathe on the Channel Classics SACD of Benjamin Britten Cello Suites). That is not necessarily bad, it just is...
What makes a live performance good for me is when the performers get into it. Then I can live with the taffeta dress, the smoke, the chair leg scraping, the bad acoustics, etc. Having seen The Bad Plus at the Blue Note is one of the highlights of my "live music" career. However, this had nothing to do with the sound quality, the "inner detail", the "air", the "timbral accuracy", or some of the usual audiophile terms. I had excellent seats to see the guys play their first set in Tokyo. It was great. They had a ball, and so did I.
For me, the "air" which is important is the decay of musical instruments or the decay of a real echo in a space (like the decay of organ, or voices, in Arvo Part's music recorded in a cathedral). I agree with the earlier point about miking. Good miking makes a recorded performance more detailed than a live performance (very rarely have I been close enough to hear a cellist breathe the way I can hear Peter Wispelwey breathe on the Channel Classics SACD of Benjamin Britten Cello Suites). That is not necessarily bad, it just is...