How close to the real thing?

Assigning an actual percentage would be an exercise in intellectual futility and meaningless as nobody would agree...it's enough to say that I've not heard reproduced sound, sound anything like the real thing, EVER.
Varying degrees of 'wow', but not enough to fool anyone.
OK, not enough to fool me, I can't speak for others.

Larry

Maineiac,
That group was Misty River (buy their album, they're good).
It was fun to have the girls show up each night at CES, play music and such.
That was 2005 CES.

Larry

Essential,
Don't argue with me, I put the consortium together for Von Schweikert--Oracle, PS Audio, Rives Audio, Acoustic Zen, VAC...altzheimers, a wonderful thing, helps me meet new people every day. It WAS probably 2004--somehow, since that was the year of my divorce, I was probably numb most of the time--anesthetized...
We did The Show, as it was, though slightly less traveled, a good place to be.
The girls were as sweet and beautiful as they were talented. Great time that year.

Thanks for reminding me of how 'out of touch' my memory has...what were we talking about??
Larry

Respectfully, I'm thinking that what you're hearing, Hifitime, is the lack of a tweeter blaring at you...with this obnoxious HF hash.
My favorite saying is, 'The best tweeter I ever heard, I didn't.'
It's true, very few loudspeakers capture the true harmonic structure of a violin without 'hyping' the HF energy...Sad, but true.
I know that, if I go for a few months without 'live violins' and then hear one, I usually blink a bit at first until my brain recalibrates the info. So I know what you're saying, completely.

Larry

Irv,
You can add MBL's to the 'live' category. Set up properly, a tough one, most shows don't allow for proper set ups for anyone, and a system as complex as the MBL's take time and space. BUT, when set up properly they're magic.

On the Sound Labs, I LOVE them--and you're 100 percent correct about their tonal/spatial characteristics...just right for my taste--an amazing product.
Irving M Fried, of IMF and Fried fame, used to show omnipolar frequency response of speakers--and did so more than 30 years ago. It was a.) ahead of its time b.) ambitious c.) evo/revolutionary thinking.
No body else (correct me here if I'm wrong {usually am}) does this any more. Why? Because the results are terrible.
Just as Jim Thiel showed Step Response Information, which displays the 'capture' of the drivers releasing the energy into the room as a unit body, either 'in phase' or not, with time function, lead lag information--strangely, almost NO ONE does this. Why, because their responses look really, really bad.
The now 21 year old design, the CS5's had a virtually perfect step response.
It would be interesting to see the Sound Lab Step Response,
because of it's design, it would almost have to be perfection too. Scientific (not evidence, because the ear is the final arbiter there) validation that what we're hearing is as it should be.

Great post.

Larry

One truly missing ingredient in the process is the recording/transfer equipment. Mic's are so variable, as to be frustrating, with some real improvements recently...then there's the question of 'how to position and place' performers.
In an ideal world, they'd simply set up as if performing...but how often do we see this?
In another post a couple of years ago, I sent kuddos to Michael Buble for having the guts as a pop singer, to announce that he recorded the group he sang in front of, in a natural setting--without the extraordinary, measures normally taken--with him in LA, them in New York, etc.
Of late, we're seeing a trend toward this--in the Movie, Love Actually, the little girl singing, 'All I Want For Christmas', in the movie's climax, was singing 'live'. The director even commented that they went to great pains to let her breathing (which was a bit loud), be captured, so people would KNOW that it was her singing.
Then,in Across the Universe, the director, in order to gain the sense of reality, had the performers work with a 'live mic', and pretty much did the same thing.

IMHO, the true missing ingredients are, flat Frequency Response, (the greatest predictor of TONAL ACCURACY something the brain REALLY catches quickly), and possibly the key, DYNAMIC CONTRAST. The brain knows, what the dynamics SHOULD BE...and if we don't hear that, we simply know immediately that its a recording and not real. When we can do this consistantly, we'll be much closer.

IMHO.

Larry