What is it I'm failing to grasp?

@stuartk , I think you underestimate yourself. Does any system you have heard approximate the experience you get at a good live concert? Sound? you can get a good approximation of the sound out of a table radio, good enough to be able to identify the song and sing along. But, at a good live concert with just the naked instruments or with an excellent sound system you get much more, enough to raise frisson. Obviously, there is something missing is most home systems. You hear the music fine but you do not feel it. You may not be conscious of this but it is a missing piece of the puzzle. I know a few people who will attest to the fact that even if your imaging is second rate if the feeling is there you are 95% of the way home. As I said before, imaging in the best home system is surrealistic. The images are even more detailed than what you get at the best live concerts even perhaps the acoustic ones.   

@stuartk, to me it is all about the feeling and the image. Those are the characteristics of live music that are hardest to reproduce. 

The feeling is the sound, produced correctly. 

@stuartk , first of all most concerts are terrible to horrendous from an audiophile point of view but you did pick some real winners. I have seen Dave Holland three times and loved every minute of it. I have every Oregon record ever made along with every Ralph Towner record. So, musically we cover much of the same ground.

The best systems will duplicate the volume and power (dynamics and bass) of the real performance and with all but acoustic instruments au natural generally produce a more realistic image as the way instruments are amplified in public performances can really screw things up. The Dave Holland Quintet is an example of electrified instruments done right. His records are recorded with the exact same set up he uses on stage which is a real treat when you play back at home.

Most systems can not duplicate a live performance. They lack the power and bass performance to pull it off. There is also a tendency towards shrillness and sibilance due to poor control of high frequency resonance. Paul McCandless's oboe is a perfect example. In person it is smooth as silk, no pain at all. This is not the case with most of the system's I have heard including many of the systems in my past.

A system that is capable of mimicking a live performance will in most cases sound better than the live performance. In my own recent past I just saw Tower Of Power at the Hampton Beach Casino Ballroom. It was a great concert but the bass was boomy, there was an unfortunate echo and there was no image. It was, as far as I could tell, a Mono performance. I have the recently released 50 Years of TOP, a 3 disc live album, start to finish. The recording and sound are wonderful, miles better than that concert. 

If you have not got Oregon, Live at Yoshi's, GET IT TOMORROW! 

@stuartk , they are all listening to the real sound, just from a different perspective. Once recorded you can only listen to one perspective, that of the recording engineer. 

EQ is certainly one way of dealing with problems. For a high end system only digital EQ will work well. This is readily available with most room control preamplifiers. The Trinnov Amethyst has a 1/3 octave EQ from 20 Hz to 24 kHz.

I'm afraid a DAC is not going to give you more weight and density. That requires power and low bass. You can not hear bass below 20 Hz but you sure can feel it. It is that visceral sensation that makes live performances so exciting. Large rooms breath and resonate at very low frequencies, they have an acoustic signature and much of this is below 20 Hz. This information also gets into good live recordings.

Powerful, large subwoofers with digital bass management is the best way to accomplish this. MiniDSP makes a great little digital subwoofer crossover which is not too expensive. You get a commercial amp like a QSC and build two 15" subwoofer kits from Parts Express. You will get the job done for very little money and have a subwoofer system better than most commercial units. 

@richopp 1+ on the Magnepans. It seems that the larger the venue the worse the sound. IMHE outdoor venues are the best with a few exceptions like Symphony Hall in Boston. I recently heard Cassandra Wilson there and it was as good as it gets. With indoor stadiums if you can not get yourself in the first 10 rows center stage you might as well forget it. I will buy VIP tickets if available. Saw King Crimson that way a year ago, totally killer. Tanglewood is a wonderful outdoor venue. I saw Carmina Burana there a few years ago and it is amazing how it can broadcast an unamplified orchestra across such a wide area.

I have music in the background 90% of the time I am awake. When I am listening seriously I will listen to a whole album or work however long it is. I do not stop because I am tired or fatigued. I stop at the end. If time allows I might listen to another piece. Listener fatigue is a sign that there is a problem with the system. Some might say the recording but IMHE it is almost always the system and the usual fault is poor control of high frequency resonance. That high frequency glare is very tiring. Many people will think at first that a well set up room/system sounds dull until they listen a bit more and realize that the cymbal is right over there with all it's frequencies present and accounted for, coming directly from the cymbal as if contained within the instrument. 

Again I can not stress enough the benefit of a calibrated measurement system and DSP. I know exactly what the frequency response of each speaker is at the listening position and can juggle amplitude and group delay to achieve any result I want. This in no way is a replacement for physical acoustic measures. You have to use both to get the best results and they can be staggering. Hearing little LS3 5As with subwoofers sound like big Wilson's is very cool. 

@ja_kub_sz , there are so many instances were the live performance far exceeds the studio version in musicianship. Little Feat's Waiting For Columbus, Tower of power live, NIN live performances, many live Bowie performances. Not to mention Jazz and all classical performances. Basically, only in popular and rock music do you have manufactured studio performances. Listen to the extended version of the Who's Live at Leeds. You can't get that out of a studio. The recordings of live performances are in many instances better sounding than the actual performance because they are taken off the sound board avoiding acoustic problems with the venue some of which may be adding into the mix at low levels to give you the feeling of the venue without messing up the sound. 

@rocray they are all hearing the true sound. It is just at certain location it may not be so hot. If you want the best sound you have to be in certain locations. At a large indoor concert the first 10 rows dead center will work fine. At an open venue you can sit almost anywhere and get decent sound.

The point of all this is, a great system is in many instances going to sound better than the live performance given a good recording. 

@ja_kub_sz , I was 3rd row center for With Teeth at the Boston Garden. It was one of those rare instances where there were reserved seats on the floor. I had Etymotic ear plugs in and there is no home HiFi alive that can replicate that. However, Resner has produced several concert BluRays that are top notch and the sound these can produce on a great system will greatly exceed what the people at the back of the stadium were hearing which is a secession of echoes. 

With Jazz and classical things are totally different. Now you are dealing with small clubs and well tuned concert halls and the live performance routinely exceed what you hear on record. 

@jjss49 , You can not perfectly replicate a live performance on recording nor would you want to. The idea is giving you the impression that you are at a live performance and a home system can do that but, it is not easy and you have to spend at least 100K to get there not to mention the room.  IMHO the two most significant impediments to doing this are room acoustics and bass performance. 

@tangramca , this is quite true. Extended listening over 95 dB can certainly damage your ears. What I do is boost the very low bass in a certain way which gives you the sensation of a live performance at lower volumes.

@larsman , how many versions of Ripple can you listen to? 

@stuartk , I totally agree with your Dead assessment. 

I wish I could figure out a way to do it for less but I can not and given the inflationary pressure that is on us it is only going to get more expensive. It takes powerful amplifiers, line source speakers and a lot of subwoofers. 

@stuartk , No. I mean feeling not emotion. You feel music. There is a video of a man who is 100% deaf but he loves playing music because HE CAN FEEL IT!

The best systems can produce the feeling of a live event. This requires the ability to play cleanly at louder volumes, 85 - 95 dB and produce accurate bass flat down to 18 Hz, lower if you can get there. 

Imaging is a very interesting topic. In reality, imaging with a stereo system is in many ways surrealistic. At it's best imaging certainly adds to the experience. It is neat to be able to imagine walking around the individual instruments as if they existed in space. Very few systems are capable of doing this. In my experience precisely 3. The first one change my entire concept of HiFi performance. It was based on Pyramid Metronome loudspeakers and Threshold electronics. The owner, a high school teacher put on one of the Art Blakey albums and all the instruments hung in space. The second was a Peter McGrath system at Sound Components based on Stacked Quads and Mark Levinson electronics. Same effect. You can probably guess what the third is. 

The timbre, the feeling and the image are the three aspects of Hi Fi performance that have to be managed to produce a life like performance. Of the three the image is most definitely the hardest to get right. 

@stuartk , They all are hearing the true sound. A guitar amplifier is part of the instrument. Musicians pick amplifiers and speakers to get the sound they want. If you are listening to the individual  instruments through their own amplification you have the true sound. If the amplifiers are microphoned and you are listening them  through a PA system then it is not the true sound. This is the sort of thing you get in stadium concerts. The "true" sound can differ do to location but it remains the true sound. The same thing happens with vision. We can both look at the same tree but we see it from different angles. We see it slightly differently but it is still the real tree just a different perspective. 

I think we all know what it feels like to be at a live performance. My goal has always been to produce that feeling in a comfortable and safe way.