No concerts, no reference

Not really, but I really miss going to concerts. I would go to one about every six weeks, and now I realize how much I took it for granted, even though I thought at the time that I was appreciating it fully.

Here’s a little mind execise. Record a small drum kit using state of the art recording equipment, any way you like - in a studio, in your home, wherever you like.
Bring the drum set into your listening room. Play the recording. Play the real drums. You will instantly know which is real.
I believe that there is a practical limit to how excellent to make our stereos. Your mind has to fill in the blanks, and pretend that it’s real no matter what. Just like watching a movie or reading a book.
I still contunue to upgrade, however. What a weird sickness.

If your system is extremely true to the music, like perhaps yours is, Chuck - it’s harder, to “forget” what REAL sounds like - except for some cases.
For example, it’s almost impossible for a stereo system to fool you into thinking that you arelistening to a real tympani in the real space of an orchestra. What’s more, I have never heard a stereo system that can reproduce a large orchestra in a real context - that is, real enough to fool me into thinking I were sitting the audience.
I believe that this is a limitation of the stereo recording and playback process itself. Sitting in the 5 th row of an audience, the vibrations that hit my ears and body cannot be captured by a few mikes, nor played back from 2 discrete sources. The actual phase and amplitude relationships are too complex to be duplicated by stereo technology. It’s not real, almost by definition.
Small bands and vocals fare better. But still, I’ve only heard two or three systems that could make me believe that I was actually in the prescence of a real drum kit. Your brain knows the difference.
So for these cases, forgetting what real sounds like, is more plausible.

Sorry, no auditory memory problems here.