Like most of the contributors I love to hear the individual instruments or groups of instruments across the soundstage on a well recorded CD. However a well recorded CD will produce sounds from the orchestra that you do not generally hear in the concert hall, whether you want to hear them or not. For example I recently played a bassoon concerto and could hear the intake of breathe from the soloist before he/she began the solo, the click of the keys ( I call them keys but I am sure there is an official term that I can't remember) and the shuffling of the players feet, all sounds you would be unlikely to hear at a live venue unless, perhaps you sat in the front row. Also I have found that, particularly on many jazz piano trio CDs, imaging is very artificial with drums out of one channel, bass out of the other channel and piano in the middle. In reality at a jazz venue the musicians are placed much closer together and the imaging , therefore ,is not as pronounced. So what you hear on a CD will rarely be what you hear at a live venue, whether it be imaging or extraneous sounds.
Is imaging reality?
I’m thrilled that I finally reached the point in my quest where instruments are spread across my listening field like a virtual “thousand points of light.” I would never want to go back to the dark ages of mediocre imaging, But as a former classical musician, the thought occurs to me, is this what I hear at a concert, even sitting in the first row? What we’re hearing is the perspective of where the microphones are placed, generally right on top of the musicians. So close that directionality is very perceptible, unlike what we hear in the hall. The quality of our systems accurately reproduces this perspective wonderfully.
But is it this as it is in the real world?
But is it this as it is in the real world?