Does Your System Sound Like the Real Thing?

This is the ultimate question and the answer for me has
always been "of course not". But, it's not what I expect.
Just like sex, music is more in the mind than the body.
If that weren't true, any music reproduction
system would be worthless.

I would like to set up an experiment where musicians
play live from behind a curtain, then live from a remote
location with the sound reproduced using the best mics,
amps, cables, and speakers behind the curtain.
I bet ANYONE could tell the difference.

In my experience, the part of music reproduction that
causes the most "damage" is the recording itself.
This was made clear to me many years ago,
and often since, while listening to radio.
WFMT (a fine Chicago radio station!) was playing
recorded music, as usual, but then switched to a live,
non-recorded performance from their studios. The
change in the quality of music reproduction was immediately
apparent. I've listened carefully to the difference
between live, non-recorded music and recorded music in
any medium (tape, LP, direct-to-disc, CD, HDCD, SACD)
and non-recorded music certainly comes closest to real.

TJ

The real thing? With eyes closed, I can tell in a jiff between the real thing, and my humble $25K system. I can also, in a jiff with eyes closed, tell the real thing from live with a $250k system. We've come a long way in stereo, but live is not even close---To these tympanics, at any rate....I'm talking acoustic instruments, properly miked vocals too. Electric instruments, synthesizers and the like? That's very close!

on smaller scale recordings (allison krauss, vivaldi chamber
stuff, piano, mozart clarinet quintet, etc.) my system sounds
great and extremely satisfying. on beethoven #5 or stravinsky's firebird, it sounds like a stereo. large choral works sound largely strident. i heard the wilson wamms Wonce
and they came startlingly close to sounding like a symphony orchestra (shostakovich #4/ashekenazy). if you have gobs of
money to build a room and customize a system, you might be able to acheive "95%" of reality. otherwise, imho, stick
to good recordings of chamber music and/or attend more concerts.

I truly think my stereo sounds MUCH better than live.
It may not sound the same, but when have you been to 2 concerts that sounded the same? how many were held
in accoustically correct rooms?

Of course we are all at the mercy of good recordings.

Instrument reproduction is very speculative, again, how a live instrument sounds in one place will vary greatly than another.
I love the fact that i can control my room to MY liking and enjoy it anytime i want.
I love live performances, but all to often they are in pathetically bad situations with no concern for accoustics.

I agree with Jond. The whole business of scale is often ignored in discussions about "absolute sound". I've never heard a system whose soundstage, depth, height, matches that of a real, live orchestra. Not fair? But that's how the question is put. I have not heard mega-buck systems, but I would venture to guess that nothing currently available can recreate the orchestra.