"Breathing" of the air

Bill,
ROFL!!

Of course you hear what we describe as air here in a live concert, Mr.T. Nobody has ever implied that you can hear the air we breathe. When I opened up Audiogon just now I saw your name on top for this thread and wondered what you would have cooked up now. You have not disappointed me. Ever the inventive mind and good for a laugh.

Mrtennis, agreed, timbral errors have to be dealt with first. But to do that properly, you must first know what a real instrument, a full orchestra etc. sounds like.

Well, to chime in, I like Shadorne's two cents and Athmasphere's definition, because my idea of "air" is closely related to what I would call the "aura" around instruments being played, which is so evident in live music and rather difficult to reproduce properly at home, even with the "right" recordings.

Now in a more serious vein, -from the popcorn gallery- to paraphrase Newbee: I like what he had to say about this topic. I also think air is either in the recording or it is not. I don't like phase to be screwed around with, because that could give you lots of unnatural "air". A transparent system, with good handling of transients, which by the way took ages for me to build up, will give me an idea of the "aura" around instruments, which I will hear in a live concert in spades and try to implement at home with varying success. In actual fact, it is so difficult to achieve, that many experts here, who've never been to a live event, wouldn't even know what I was talking about. But if you begin to get that right, most of the rest, what our happy crew here thinks important, generally falls into place as well: stable images, pin-point placement of voices and instruments, depth and width of soundfield, not fatiguing rendering of music, PRAT and proper timbre.

To get back to my previous post:
You can put what I said the other way round: If you get all that mas o meno right, hopefully including the start, developing and decay of music at all frequencies as well, from pppp to ffff in the dynamic range mind you, you have a good chance to get that air I'm talking about with a good recording, but only with that and only if your system does not cheat too much on you as it generally does though.
So I'm sad, that I am not Count Esterhazy, who could afford a Haydn and his crew for his stereo. (Not to speak of his living quarters)