My audiophile take on the symphony last night.

"The highs were rolled off"

The supertweeter must have had the night off.

Seriously, you have to attend a lot of live musical performances in a lot of venues (good and bad) to get a real perspective on what music can, should or does sound like. It is usually all over the map from sublime to forgettable to irritating, just like the recordings we listen to at home.

I've heard a symphony sound sublime live one day at teh local symphony hall and a rock band sound absolutely horrible like in an echo chamber another in the exact same SOTA venue. Seating location alone can make a huge difference.

It can be a real eye opener when you come to the realization that the absolute sound exists in theory perhaps but seldom ever in reality. It also helps take a lot of pressure disappointment and potential expense out of this whole audiophile experience deal when what we hear only occasionally lives up to our expectations.

I think if the perfect sound is what you seek, get a really good synthesizer or musical instrument and learn to produce it yourself. Otherwise just enjoy things including live musical performance and recordings for what they are as best you can.

"Funny thing about live music - no matter how bad the acoustics are, you can tell it's live and not recorded."

Probably true. What our ears hear when listening is only part of the story though.

I like to close my eyes on occasion during live concerts and when listening at home. This helps me assess each relative to each other based only on what I hear better.

When I do this, I often think I would not know for certain which I am listening to by just listening alone. There are so many variables involved even with just what you hear!

At present, as long as I do not hear any artificial artifacts that are only involved with recordings (very bad recordings, hiss, pops/clicks, audible distortions affecting acoustic instruments, blatantly artificial sounding stereo effects, etc.) its often hard to tell. In a blind test, with the right recorded test material and similar venues, I think I could very well fail to identify live versus recorded consistently.

I think?

Matching the scale and acoustics of larger live venues at home is a challenge only very few have any prayer of accomplishing ever. So you do have to accept the fact that your home listening venue is often the bottleneck no matter what regardless of how much you might pour into your system and room.