I’ve long claimed that live music is a full body experience, while most reproduced is more heard than felt. Part of that is a matter of SPL, another is that very few hi-fi systems reproduce the bottom octave (20-40Hz) at all, let alone at the SPL produced by PA systems.
But it’s still more than THAT. At live shows I hear the enormous sound of the venue (one reason I would love to own an Eminent Technology TRW-17 Rotary woofer, for frequencies 20Hz and below. Not that most recordings contain any information that low in frequency), and feel the buildings’ structure vibrating under my boots (Tony Lamas ;-). Reproduced music is mostly an intellectual experience, at its’ best becoming an emotional one. But still not a physical one.
There’s a big difference between watching a movie and being in one. But since most recordings are made in small rooms (studios, some of which are surprisingly small), comparing recorded sound to live is like apples to oranges: they are completely different entities. The most we can hope to achieve is for reproduced voices to sound as they do in life, and the same for instruments.