Does loudness play a part in your appreciation?

I've sat in the booths a tiny bar with a jazz big band taking up the entire floor. It was amazing, but if I played my system at that kind of volume it would seem crazy loud—even though my living room is larger than that bar. I think the microcosm of music idea applies, and it's more than compression and good gear. Live music has a different energy to it from recordings. I'm kinda glad. It's part of why I love going to hear live music.

Saw Jon Anderson and his Band of Geeks live last weekend in a larger theater sized venue.  This was heaven for a Yes fan!   JA still got it.  At 80+ his vocals were pretty immaculate which is a wonder!   The Band of Geeks....awesome!  Super talented and their youth provided unbridled energy.  Bruford and Squire would be proud!  I’ve seen Yes many times live over the years so I have a good frame of reference for judging such things. 

I was about halfway back.  Sound quality was top notch and peaked in the mid 90’s. 

When I got home, listening to a high res stream of the similar live album, I set my listening level to just below that to try and best reproduce what I heard.  That’s why I have a good hifi.... to get as close as possible to the real thing. If only I had a bigger room to match the theater.  Oh well, que sera sera.  I’d need  to scale up my hifi as well and who needs all that?

All things considered, I came pretty close....not perfect.  I’ll blame the recording and associated different live venue mostly for that. :^)

One of my gripes with some of the live performances we attend is that the volume level is too high for the room; you can see someone singing into the microphone, but can't hear anything they are singing, same with other instruments.

Being a "70-something" I find a "sweet spot" when listening to rock and roll, where it's loud enough to be "full" sounding, but not too loud.

@ejr1953

+1...  52 for me.

I used to attend a conference that had a big name band every year... Sheryl Crow, Steve Miller... etc. I would also occasionally go to concerts... for instance Pat Metheny. Not only too loud, but the equalization typically tipped to far into the high end. I always ended with napkins stuffed in my ears... and that wasn’t enough. Often the sound system had so much high frequency hash from excessive gain in it that that would send me out of the concert hall. I stopped going altogether. 
 

I much prefer to listen at home. Much better sound system...categorically and not too loud. Much more enjoyable. Also, not being among a bunch of rowdy noisy people.

Then to my chagrin after 10 years of attending the Oregon Symphony they installed a multimillion dollar DSP system to make it sound better and screwed up the beautiful acoustic sound... hardening the violins, raising volume of the bass, and positioning the sound of the drums at the back of the symphony hall among the listeners. It crossed my eyes to listen to what they had done. So it goes.