No, what we hear from a good recording on a good system in a well treated room presents as something I've never heard in a concert hall with respect to pinpoint imaging. I'm not a professional musician, but while I lived in the midwest I attended 20-30 concerts a year in many different venues. Full scale orchestral, Bach passions, recitals, and chamber music-- pretty much a full spectrum of classical. Even with string quartets, sitting three to four rows back center hall, if I closed my eyes, I could usually not pull apart the 1st and 2nd violins unless I knew the work well enough to distinguish the parts. I actually had this discussion with one of the cellists of the Indianapolis orchestra. He advise me to loose my front row seats and go for 1st row balcony. His point was that "symphony" implies that the parts are to be heard as a whole (soloists excepted). My response was that I could stay home and hear that on my very good system. I came to live performances to experience something I could not experience at home, that being watching him and his colleagues work feverishly to do justice to Herr Beethoven. I also told him I dearly loved the complex tone of his instrument, which was utterly lost even a dozen rows back. All of this is OK as far as I am concerned. If all I listened to at home was large scale orchestral, I might not be too concerned about imaging, but I do listen to other non-classical stuff where the engineer and musicians intended a musicians in the room effect.
