How close to the real thing?

Live performances have a different dimensionality based on seating, hall ambiance, and all the little nuances that make it "real" to some. You can't catch it all in a recording. A guy that trips up the stairs, or a couple giggling a few rows back. These things make it "live" for us.

I think of it as analogous to watching a well done movie of a plane flying through Grand Canyon. If you watch it on your 20 inch Sony you are getting 10% of the experience, but if you watch it at Imax, closer to say 80%.

I've heard huge Rockport's or Verity's nicely set up that bring you very close to to live. I'm going with 80%

"If you watch it on your 20 inch Sony you are getting 10% of the experience, but if you watch it at Imax, closer to say 80%."

I like your Grand Canyon analogy Bjesien. But do you really mean to say "experience" or would "information" be more precise? . At what resolution does one start to feel the "take your breath away" experience of actually being there in a really effective way? It would seem that there should be real and unreal - simple. But maybe this thread proves that there are many subjective perceptions of reality.

I have flown through the Gand Canyon in a helicopter, and I have seen Imax. I have also tried memory experiments and read books about how recall works. The texture of simulation is far removed from real sensory experience and memory is but a type of simulation.
What all simulations share is distortion and lack of information. One day we might achieve near perfect reproduction of a recording, but no chance ever of reproducing the "experience". I imagine a time when a person's reaction to an event can be recorded and "played back" through direct brain stimulation, but the rules would still apply.
Finally there is the novelty phenomenon. An ad for an early Edison record player shows an Opera singer listening to a recording of another singer with his eyes closed. He witnesses that he cannot tell any difference from hearing her live. We chuckle, but I expect he really was thrilled and enchanted with the novelty, so he was easily fooled.

I've seen a few say that they play in bands... I don't play in bands, but I have done sound for a half dozen and still do sound regularly in churchs. My experience is that amplified live venues or music that goes through a mixing board really shouldn't count toward this discussion or at least be discounted. Not just the quality of the mics are in play, but the mix is changed to sound correctly in the venue being played, the snakes are typically over very long runs and mixing boards vary just as much as preamps to the recording. I clearly understand that this is nearly impossible to filter out, but the very best recordings for imaging are two channels mixed with the best of microphones. Anything with a mixer will throw more instruments into a false center stage.... Good Listening,Tim

I agree 95% with:

11-23-10: Lrsky
Assigning an actual percentage would be an exercise in intellectual futility and meaningless as nobody would agree...it's enough to say that I've not heard reproduced sound, sound anything like the real thing, EVER.

The 5% difference is I would say reproduced sound does sound something like the real thing, yet it is recognizable as recorded, and always distinguishable from the real thing. The difference in % terms? No idea how one would assess that meaningfully, but I always know it is Memorex.