Sat front row at the symphony...

@brunomarcs 

There have been great concert halls for hundreds of years. Many great ones available to us were built in the 1920’s. They are great acoustically and aesthetically. 
 

I am not sure when I attended my first… probably Chicago in the 1960’s but I highly recommend it. Do not put it off. Do it soon. Find a great hall near you.

I have had the privilege of listening to live orchestra’s in great halls hundreds of times… it has been such a great experience and helped me so much in targeting what I wanted from my audio system. 

Congradulations on the experience. I have been fortunate enough to have season tickets to the Oregon Syphony for a decade. The “best” seats in the house for sound are typically reported as the 7th row center. I found in this symphony hall it is 8th row center left, I have had both.

The exact seats depend on the hall. But in these seats when there is a soloist… for instance, a violinist, the sound hole will be pointed roughly at these seats… and the piano top will reflect sound to this area. You are far enough back to have the sound integrate well, when appropriate but keep individual instruments easily distinguishable in great detail.

Anyway, a really great system can come very close to reproducing the sound. One of the reasons I began attending regularly was to tune my ears to real acoustical sound. It worked, and over the ten years I completing changed the direction my system evolution was going and made two major upgrades. These have been the most important and substantial of my 50+ year pursuit of the high end.