How often should you re-calibrate your ears?

I try to get out at least a few times a year to experience live music. Live is live and IMO no amount of money can buy a Hi Fi system that can equal the live experience. Last year I went to a Jazz concert and the next day I visited a local Hi Fi dealer who had a system set up worth about $150,000.00. I heard a CD played on that system of the Jazz group I had heard the night before and it was NOT the same. It seems to me that once a recording is made something is just lost in the process and no amount of money worth of high end audio equipment can bring it back. The biggest difference I noticed was with the drums, especially with cymbals. They just had such a sweet metalic shimmer that was NOT there when the same recorded CD was played back on even a system in excess of 100 grand. It's like comparing a photo of a certain place or event, just not the same as being there.

We may be missing the point RCPrince made ...

NJPAC/Avery Fisher/Carnegie are concert halls playing UN-amplified, live music where your ears get to hear an instrument without any mixing board in the way. I would think this is in fact, a reference - even though we all do not necessarily like classical or "pop" music.

Listening to any amplified music thru a mixing board and amplifiers/speakers etc is, as has been pointed out above, not a reference at all. In these cases we are subject to the choices made by the mixing engineer, and the effects of transmitting and amplifying the music electronically (even when standing right in front of the mixing panel).

most every recording is meant to sound like a recording. even most live recordings are remixed and overdubbed.

i listen to tons of live music of a lot of different typse, play blues in clubs and have a brother that is a talented sound engineer.

The biggest difference, eerything else being equal which it ain't) is that live show system move so much more air than most home systems could ever dream of. The result is that while my home speakers are supposed to be flat to sub 30 db, and a pair of dual 18 EV subs are good into the 40's and not flat at all, the EVs will prvide the chest pounding that the home unit won't.

Likewise, when i listen to Bonny Raitt for example, i get the sence that somewhere in the recording room there is a raging blackface Fender Super Reverb but the impact from those 4X10s on the verge isn't conveyed; and it usually doesn't translate all that well through a PA either. Stage volume has a huge effect on the overall feel of a show because that is the source of the dynamics before the compressor/limiters get ahold of things. Getting it all through the mains is like listening to a untweaked mega system thrown into a bar).

And to comment on Ez2hear's remark about hearing through the board or the speakers, he's dead on. Once you get through the rack into the mains and into the room, that sound will often little resemble the dry sound off of the board. Effects and EQ can cover a lot of ills, as does taking an offending musician out of the mix while he's engaging in hog cutting.