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How close to the real thing?

Recently a friend of mine heard a Chopin concert in a Baptist church. I had told him that I had gone out to RMAF this year and heard some of the latest gear. His comment was that he thinks the best audio systems are only about 5% close to the real thing, especially the sound of a piano, though he admitted he hasn't heard the best of the latest equipment.

That got me thinking as I have been going to the BSO a lot this fall and comparing the sound of my system to live orchestral music. It's hard to put a hard percentage on this kind of thing, but I think the best systems capture a lot more than just 5% of the sound of live music.

What do you think? Are we making progress and how close are we?
peterayer

Showing 1 response by dcstep

dcstep
1,518 posts
 
I only disagree with the 5% part. I think that should be more like 90% and mostly constrained by the room size. A properly set up system in an auditorium could get much closer to the real thing.

As a trumpeter, I've seldom felt that I heard a recorded trumpet sound as live. There were a few direct-to-disk exceptions in the analog days and some reel-to-reel recordings got close, but most lacked some key overtones and dynamic range. Now, with DSD and other hi-rez recording techniques, I'm hearing the real thing more and more.
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