Just a comment about commcat's post. I have no doubt that the tapes you and the engineer heard at your home sounded like the live performance. However, I once did an amateur stereo recording of a community-produced musical in an auditorium. I was a kid, it was 1977 - and used my Superscope Dolby cassette deck and a pair of $15 RatShack mics set up on a table about 10 feet back from the stage. Everyone who heard my unedited cassette recording was astounded at how much like the original it sounded, in spite of the obvious lack of fidelity of the recording chain and playback gear (my old stereo was OK, but mid-fi - Advent New Large, Kenwood receiver and the afformentioned Superscope deck).
Why? My theory is that all who heard the recording were present at the performance (or in it), and had some memory of the acoustic environment. Since my amateur setup captured the echos of that auditorium, the recording sounded like the live event. This effect was especially true when using headphones (I had Sennheisser 424X cans) fed from the cassette deck's headphone jack. Just my $0.02.
Why? My theory is that all who heard the recording were present at the performance (or in it), and had some memory of the acoustic environment. Since my amateur setup captured the echos of that auditorium, the recording sounded like the live event. This effect was especially true when using headphones (I had Sennheisser 424X cans) fed from the cassette deck's headphone jack. Just my $0.02.