If you were serious about sound you would...

How is it possible to get better sound than the best recording studio gear?

For sure the better the gear you own the better it will be ... This is a complete common place fact  tautology missing the main factors which is not the gear price tag and design even if for sure it matters ...

It is possible to improve on studio recording acoustic listening , why not, with only good gear even if it is less costly one than the recording gear from the studio , if you listen in a very sophisticated dedicated acoustic room with the BACCH filters for example on any relatively good high end system ...😁

Psycho-acoustics process and parameters rule the gear not the reverse ...

Gear fetichism is dead and psycho-acoustics mature enough rule...

I must say I agree with @mahgister in an important way, acoustics is missing in so many audiophiles rooms that are very serious about playback it's sad. 

The point of this thread is very simple - if you were serious about playback you would .... answer:

Reproduce a studio mixing room. Mixing studios all over the world mix music after it is recorded they take many tracks of individual instruments vocals effects and mix them together to create the musicians and producers vision for the music. In the professional world you build the best room you have money for and you use monitors and equipment that any experienced professional mixer can use when he or she sits down at the desk. If you use boutique non mainstream equipment the mixer will not know how to use it or trust the mix and the producer will pay more money and that studio will go under.

If you as an audiophile have better equipment than the studio uses you must ask yourself why? None of  the extra musicality you get from the 50k DAC is heard at a typical mixing session that extra information you are getting is not used or mixed or a part of the music that you are supposed to have.

Having musicians play for you is  not a good idea because you aren't able to mix and change the sounds in the same way the studio can, unless you are listening to an acoustic trio or quartet with no effects live musicians also won't sound as good as a well mixed group on your high quality playback system because your seat won't be as good as the microphones placement (very important) in light of the acoustics of the room, the dynamics of the instrument, the reflections of the room the loudness of the instruments and many times the quality of the musicians and their different individual talent levels. 

@mahgister Sorry brother you are still wrong about getting better sound than the studio for at least 2 reasons.

#1 The 2nd law of thermo dynamics is entropy it says that you can’t make more information unless an outside source adds it, we’ve talked about how very soon AI will have the ability to add information at a huge cost but we are not there yet. (machine learning, yes that is here now but not adding info in the same way).

#2 You are not meant to hear more than what is mixed, there are often times when the microphones as raised and lowered effects and dynamic patches are used because of non optimal (often it is when there is one bad back ground vocalist) recordings and thus mixing is always compromised and the trick is do the best with what you have, we aren’t meant to have perfect reproductions of the musicians playing because those musicians may be drunk, high or just having a bad day. Compromises always compromises and mixing defensively is more common than audiophiles ever imagined.

@mahgister Sorry brother you are still wrong about getting better sound than the studio for at least 2 reasons.

You completely misread my last post... 😊

I said that a very good system can reach studio quality if the listener in his dedicated room use the BACCH filters ... No studio use them, most at least ...

Why this is so ?

No need to appeal to thermodynamics and common place fact about entropy ... 😊

The source of music is not the mixing, it is the acoustic atmosphere captured by the mics and translated in our own room system acoustics ...Mixing must be a cherry on a cake not the cake when we recorded a violin or an opera singer...

The recording of acoustics spatial information is lost in all stereo playback ... It is known by acousticians studying the effect of crosstalk on spatial duimensions sound perceptions then on timbre also ... It is the discovery of Dr. Choueiri to created filters adressing this problem ... Using these filters then any high end system with them not without them can give a quality experience rivalling any studio which did not use them in their system ...

Heavily mixed music is not ideal by the way and my goal in audio, listening Bach for example, is not retrieving the mix formula of the studio engineer but the acoustic atmosphere specific in the recorded church /organ playing for example .. the mixing engineer here must obey the playing instrument acoustic constrainst in that space ...... I dont need the same audio materials for that as those used by the studio engineer ...Here i will need the BACCH filters with any high end system in a dedicated acoustic room for sure , not the same playback system as in the studio ...😁 I dont mind about the mix engineer specific intention by the way , i mind about the organ recorded playing in this or in that church ...The artist here for me is the musician not the engineer ... ( even if any great sound engineer is an artist in his own way ) i listen music not sounds ...

Having musicians play for you is not a good idea because you aren’t able to mix and change the sounds in the same way the studio can, unless you are listening to an acoustic trio or quartet with no effects live musicians also won’t sound as good as a well mixed group on your high quality playback system because your seat won’t be as good as the microphones placement (very important) in light of the acoustics of the room, the dynamics of the instrument, the reflections of the room the loudness of the instruments and many times the quality of the musicians and their different individual talent levels.

Exactly...

Now in classical music we want to retrieve in our room the way the instruments were recorded ... This is what for was designed the BACCH filters ..

And seating in a concert Hall we felt the acoustic impact of our location as a real impact . be it near or afar ; but listening the playback we want to feel the same real impact as if i was there well seated for sure but nevermind where ... It is not necessary to be on the knees of the musician or in the microphone spot when we go to concert , it is not necessary to feel to be on the knee of the musician or in the microphone spot to enjoy an acoustic real natural experience in playback translation in our system/room with the BACCH filters ...😁😎

A huge part of the cost of those speakers is the ability to play incredibly loudly.  Nobody needs that at home.  The goals of a system like this are a lot different than a normal home stereo application.  

Linear Peak SPL3:  130 dB with crest factor >17 dB (M-noise), 127 dB (Pink noise), 129 dB (B-noise)

https://meyersound.com/download/bluehorn-system-datasheet/?wpdmdl=250406&masterkey=5c7f21101524d

@jon_5912 

Yes, I mentioned those blue horn speakers because they are the speakers that mixers say “dude I got to mix on the blue horns”. They are fairly new and changing monitoring as well as the Genelec “The Ones” speakers that are much les expensive. Speakers are a caveat to my argument, speakers are the exception because they can create a better extension of the sound the mix in the studio was supposed to give you, not just high and low frequencies but more accuracy for everything. I know it sounds like I’m contradicting myself but it’s like this. At what volume level do you listen to your music well that makes a huge difference to what frequencies actually go in your ears, this is not an electronics question but an acoustic principle. Speakers are part of the acoustic mating of your listening and your ears not a DAC or an amplifier. 

Recording acoustic performances and leaving them untouched is practically never done anymore, the best imaging and hair raising recording I’ve done was with a single stereo mic for a choir with no orchestra if there is an orchestra you need multiple mics because the trumpets are always to loud and cover the important obo part which is playing ppp at the same time the brass section is playing. Conductors can’t understand why their arrangement has to follow the laws of physics when doing a -you are in the audience recording-.