Sat front row at the symphony...

I’m at the show to experience the piece. Both composition and ensemble.  
Perhaps the prioritization of detail over cohesion is beneficial for smaller ensembles.  
I bet the up-close, “wow, I can hear that one small part extra clear” thing is great should one have the luxury of viewing the same show multiple times.  
If I’m going to the show once, I want that Row-5-8 thing.

@mikeydee you think you had good seats???

https://nypost.com/2023/05/01/woman-has-full-body-orgasm-during-la-philharmonic-concert/P

I wonder if any of the people who disagree with my preference for close musical encounters have had enough experience comparing seats at various distances.  When an event was popular, I could never get a close audience seat.  From the 10th row or so, I would suffer through the first piece, realizing that my home system of Audiostatic 240 electrostatic speakers, excellent solid state electronics, my fast, neutral Denon 305 MC cartridge on Alphason tonearm and Goldmund Studio turntable offered much more musical detail and resolution than the 10th row.  On a detailed Mercury Living Presence recording with close recorded perspective, my audio system was about as revealing as the 1st or 2nd row, although the live sound was more natural with that detail.  But the most highly rated concert hall, the Musikverein in Vienna was a sonic dog from the 25th row, nothing but a bloated echo chamber.  The solo cello sounded like a 40 foot blown up character in a street fair.  As the most famous hall in the world, with New Years Day concerts broadcast worldwide, it was always nearly sold out, so I went back 3 times to hear the same orchestra, migrating closer each time.  Of course, my best seat was the 5th row, but I couldn't get closer.  The hall had a big advantage of having a stage that wasn't elevated, so the line of sight and sound was good.  You didn't have to be a giraffe to have a height advantage.  Admittedly, the 1st row in most halls is way below the stage, so the line of sight is poor from the 1st row.  (The Carnegie Hall stage is a full 4 ft high).  So the 5th row in Vienna was pretty good.  But I would have paid good money to perform on that stage and be thrilled with that crisp sound with neutral tonality that was hinted at from the 5th row.

The most revealing and exciting ensemble experience comes from a being in a small chamber group on the stage or a good room where everyone is sitting intimately close to each other.  Close contact like this minimizes the bouncing around reverberations which smear musical detail.  OK, there are some nonmusical extraneous sounds.  But the greatly increased musical detail predominates by far, and even the nonmusical sounds are part of the total sound of the instruments.  Anybody who prefers not to hear the instrument noises by sitting further away is also throwing away much of the musical overtones, like throwing out the baby with the bathwater.    

Many years ago, I was privileged to play string quartets sitting next to an esteemed violinist.  It was a soft slow movement from a Haydn quartet.  All of a sudden, he played an accented sforzando that wasn't loud at all, but the transient impact and his detailed control blew me away.  I will remember this for many years to come. At concerts listening to other great performers from the 1st row, the impact was markedly lost in my 1st row seat.  Any further back, forget about it--POLITE BOREDOM.  

One of my favorite violinists, Henryk Szeryng, I heard in concert many years ago from about 100 feet away.  I couldn't get closer.  I'm ashamed to admit that I fell asleep from the muddy sound I heard.  What a letdown by comparison to his exciting RCA recordings with fairly close microphone placement.

that orgasm story has not been verified, it's just clickbait

@viber6 

regarding Szeryng, or any violinist on recordings, I find it hard to listen to many violin recordings because the soloist is overmiked, imo.  The perspective is unnatural, in that they sound so loud compared to the rest of the Orchestra