How much “suspension of disbelief do you need?”

Long ago I helped - well, stood around uselessly - at a recording of a choral concert in a chapel at an Oxford college.  We had a coincident pair of crossed ribbons(good ones) feeding directly a set of Quad ELS’s via Quad II amplifiers, all set up in the vestry separated from the chapel by a wooden door.  You could hear the choir entering the chapel and walking by the microphones, their footsteps well outside the speakers, quite uncanny.  Needless to say this was about as good a sound as you can get.

‘However if you cracked the door so you could hear the choir through the crack, and compare it with the sound through the speakers, it was night and day.  The live sound was alive, and the speaker sound might as well have been a pair of Cerwin-Vegas or JBL’s.

So no, Hifi is pretty much hopeless in recreating a real concert, no matter how expensive it is.  It can remind you of it at best.

Thanks rvpiano, for a thought-provoking topic,

Growing up in a musical extended family, non-musical sounds always defeat the belief for me.  Once digital touched my emotions in the later 90's, begone! SOTA Star Sapphire (including Allen Perkins upgrades.  After a system is fully tuned (see nearby 'The hunt is over.." topic comments) and on nights where the planets align, yes there are those moments for me of bringing in the performances.  Feat's 'Waiting for Columbus' is an earlier mention.  At the University of Alabama's 1970's performance, I took lots of time to crawl around the arena and soak in as much of the sonics as possible, somehow knowing this is the best rock will ever get for me.  Recently, it was fun to note that John Atkinson of Phile uses "Fat Man in the Bathtub" as an evaluation tool from "Waiting...," as do I.  Also agree that solo sax and piano can perform the live in the room trick.  Mostly though, when satisfied with the system and after deciding upon the genre, it becomes meditative, thoughts drifting along with the performances, a wonderful part of living with a modern system's abilities to be present.  Mostly, I end those nights with gratitude for the many friends, including Techs that helped with the process.  More Peace, Pin

@pinthrift Great post ! we share a love for Feat. What are the SOTA upgrades ?

best to you

Jim

Production vis a vis reproduction. Apples, oranges, and not attainable in any domain IMO. Doesn’t mean that you can’t enjoy damn fine sounding hifi. 

Caution, if you invest in extremely expensive components such as cables costing over $20,000, you invest your ego in believing you are too clever to have been taken even though you will only imaging it sounding better because you can't admit any difference is so subtle it is difficult to impossible to hear it. If junk science such as amateurly done uncalculated physics is in the likes of skin effect which can only attenuate the playback volume a few hundredths of a decibel at frequencies beyond the limits of human hearing in the advertisements with no graduate school or even undergraduate school credentials of the designer praised in audio magazines and catalogues, that should end all credibility. 

While you can often judge how closely an in-store demonstrates the kind of live performance in large differences in design of amplifiers and speakers, the emotional content of the composition and the interpretation of the performers is much more powerful than subtle differences beyond the point of diminishing returns. 

Therefore, don't make exaggerated sensitivity to sonic differences a bicycle tire pump to your self-esteem and don't put up with being judged solely by how expensive your audio components are.