I had a recording studio in my house for 10 years and I recorded a fair bit of acoustic music including guitar, accordion, violin, brass, drums, taiko drums, and various percussion instruments. I can tell you from personal experience that acoustic instruments, especially when close-mic'd, have far more aggressive transients, or "bite" in person than they have on recordings. Virtually every recording engineer uses compression to tame these transients because they would be unpleasant if if not compressed.
If you are in a live music venue then, indeed, the transients are tame because you are so far away from the instruments. It's similar with recording - as you move the mic away from the instruments the transients decline.
I have never called it "bite" but my speakers and amp (Thiel CS6, Krell KSA 300S) produce transients very well and when I play a recording that has hot transients I sometimes jump in my seat. I wouldn't have it any other way. Apparently I've gotten used to it because this summer at the Pacific Audio Fest I heard several megabuck systems that didn't sound as dynamic as mine. I came home, fired up my system and went, "Yeaaah.."