Sat front row at the symphony...

There have been a few posters in this thread that have commented on the parallels between the dilemmas of concert hall perspective and the dilemmas in our home systems (analytical versus general perspective)..  A shout out to them for making this observation.  I used to have a DAC, the Mytek Manhattan, that was like an MRI machine for detail.  Ultimately I tired of the forest for the trees thing and got another DAC that gave me a mid hall perspective while not skimping on detail.

  I attended one concert in Heinz Hall, Pittsburgh probably 30 years ago.  I thought it was a great venue, although I am a bit fuzzy at this point about the details 

Interesting points about the Sibelius violin concerto.  The opening minute or two is very soft and dreamy for the orchestra, with the soloist a little louder so it is still dominant.  Orchestra and soloist are playing together in the appropriate balance.  Even later when playing together louder, the soloist is spotlighted over the generally softer fabric of the orchestra.  The popular violin concertos of Beethoven, Brahms, Tchaikovsky show more of the protagonist duels between the loud orchestra and the silent violin, and the soloist dominating over the very soft orchestra.  Thus, the popular concertos are more showoff pieces for the soloist, while the Sibelius has better balance.

Even for the soft, atmospheric opening of the Sibelius, while the balcony offers the ultimate in balance, its markedly reduced HF content vs close seats reduces the actual atmospheric and spatial appreciation.  Audiophiles call this "air".  In your home audio, you can try adding super tweeters to your main speaker to demonstrate and enjoy this.  I use the Enigmacoustics Sopranino in parallel with my main Audiostatic 240 speaker.  Another method which I find essential is careful HF boost with my Rane ME60 EQ, which I use in place of a preamp.  Boost the extreme HF only, so the midrange tonality is little affected.  This is particularly valuable with recordings done with a distant perspective, which I transform into a closer perspective.  What do I gain and lose by doing this?  Truthfully, the midrange tonality IS affected, but in a positive way by revealing the upper midrange/HF bite of the cello, trumpet, etc.  The purist will say that I am distorting the natural tonality.  But I regard the muddy veiling of distant sounds as the equivalent of the natural bland taste of aging fruit.  Everyone has tasted the more intense flavor of fresh corn vs bland weeks old corn.  It takes judicious practice to gain the benefits of revealing the full freq detail of any natural instrument while minimizing the changes in midrange tonality.  I consider my methods taking 10 steps forward and 1 step backward.

For learning the benefits of close seating without spending much money, find concerts with good music students, such as youth orchestras or semi-pro events.  Get a ticket on the main floor.  Start in row 15-20, the approximate equivalent in freq balance to the front balcony.  For the next piece, move to row 10, then row 5, etc.  For most listeners, row 5 offers the best of everything--full freq detail, balance, spatiality, ensemble.  Row 1 offers me THE best detail, although other areas are sacrificed.

It is telling to come back to the original poster who started this thread, mikeydee.  From the front row of Heinz Hall, he still was mesmerized by the acoustics and dynamics.  So the front row offered so much, not just the details of the front violin section and piano.  The raw excitement of the 1st row is unmatched further back.

If there are extraneous noises, I easily ignore them, just as I ignore the HF hiss on Odyssey reissues of Columbia (now Sony) records.  Part of the HF hiss is due to the EQ which boosts HF content of all the info on the recording.  Yes, this is often overdone and unnatural, but intelligent EQ brings out much more detail which is worth a little sacrifice of the original blend.  Musicians also make valid emphases of various details.  An example is a voicing a piano chord where boosting an upper note of a triad brings out more brilliance.  A piano such as Steinway generally has more crispness than a Baldwin, Bosendorfer or Yamaha.  They are all natural pianos, and individual pianists prefer one over the other.  Vladimir Horowitz tweaked his own Steinway piano for brilliance, and he actually went through the hassle of moving his piano from his apartment in NY to the concert hall for every concert.

It is not true that there is the same detail revealed at further distance vs close.  The laws of physics are against this claim.  Increased HF absorption with distance, more reverberation with distance, causing tonal smearing and loss of clarity.  Someone may like the distant sound, but facts are facts.

viber6, you have to define “detail”.  This has been pointed out previously.  Sure, one hear a certain type of “detail” up close.  We can debate the importance of some of that up close detail.  To a great extent it becomes a personal preference based on a variety of things; not the least of which is how one listens to music and even how each of our individual hearing apparatus hears.  However, and importantly, one also loses important musical detail up close that can only be heard from a reasonable distance.  

A mathematical definition of detail is the sum total of information at all freq.  Musically speaking, it is perception of the note fundamental with all the added harmonics, or multiples of the fundamental freq.  Since further distance has the main effect of reducing the higher freq from absorption and reverberation smearing, there is less total harmonic info, esp at higher freq.  

The one effect you validly mention is the gelling effect of the bass clarinet and cello to make a blended tone color.  While this is an interesting synthesis of the individual clarinet and cello tones to make a new blended tone, it is debatable whether we can call that "new" detail.  Suppose you have complete blending so you hear the mixture as a new color, but you can't separate the two different instruments.  You gain the blend, but lose the information as what the two components are.  Example--Grieg and other Scandinavian composers create unique tone colors from certain instrument combinations, but it bothers me if I am listening to a low resolution audio system or distant live sound and I cannot identify the individual instruments that make up the blended tone.  Wine analogy--I am not a connoisseur, so while I might enjoy the overall taste, I cannot perceive or I have never had the training to appreciate the many individual tastes.  If I got a wine tasting education, I would enjoy more aspects of the wine than I am presently able to.  So the wine connoisseur perceives more details of the individual flavors, and is analogous to the front row listener.  My taste perceptions are analogous to the distant listener, only able to perceive the blend.  

Good musicians can blend well enough so that even up close, the perception is a good blend.  Further away, there is more blend, but at a severe price of much less individual detail.  This effect mainly concerns HF detail, since HF are quantitatively lost much more at distance than lower freq detail.  Since you play midrange and lower freq dominated instruments, I see why you are less concerned with HF detail than I.  I don't ignore low freq and midrange detail, either.  The fact is that all instruments have significant wideband freq energy.  The string bass has a uniquely wide freq range from deep bass to the HF from bow scraping and strong plucking of the string when it slaps the fingerboard.  I get much more of the total wide freq range string bass sound (more detail) by listening close vs further away.

At Tarisio/Sotheby/Christie auctions, I have listened to good violinists comparing different violins.  Even from 5 feet away, there may not be much difference that I hear.  But then I compare these violins under my ear when I play them.  The differences are magnified by orders of magnitude.  I hear shortcomings under my ear that I totally missed from only a few feet away.  That's due to the tremendous increase in detail up very close.  However, close listening doesn't just reveal more flaws.  It can reveal more power and beauty.  In a string quartet, I once played with another violinist who had a Nicolo Gagliano.  I liked what I heard in her playing.  When she let me try her instrument, I was shocked and bowled over by its power and multicolored beauty under my ear.  More details PLUS more beauty.