Strange phenomona this hobby.

...and only unamplified. Most PA assisted gigs are awful, especially the bigger they get, often downright get-your-money-back abominable.

Stringreen, your post brought to mind an experience I had at a concert in Calgary. I have found that the sound received at the Dress Circle level of seats is glorious - I usually try to sit near the middle - but recently my seat was on the extreme left of Dress Circle. At time of purchase I thought that was OK as it was still Dress Circle; but the opening piece had a sound that wasn't quite what I was used to. I think my seat was picking up more of the sounds of the brass section situated on the right side of the stage. It disturbed me. Later my brain became used to it, I think, because I could still enjoy the orchestra though it wasn't the best seat in the house.

Respect for difference of opinion aside, I could not disagree with Stringreen more. Recorded music very seldom comes anywhere near close to conveying the subtleties of the emotional content of music. And isn't the conveyance of emotion what music is all about? I am always perplexed when some discuss aspects of the live music experience with the usual audiophile lingo only. Yes, there are seats in all major (and minor) concert venues that don't do certain aspects of SOUND particularly well. But, I can think of few live experiences that have not trounced recorded sound as concerns MUSIC. The immediacy of the music, the unadulterated harmonic content of the instruments' (or voices') timbre, the hard-to-describe absence of all those resistors, caps, transformers, and wire. One can appreciate a lot of those qualities sitting on the toilet at the local jazz club. What I am talking about has nothing to do imaging or soundstaging; although in the right seats, the concert experience is unequaled in those respects. It's the difference between a drink of cool mountain spring water and city tap water.

Dcstep is correct, one doesn't have to use live sound as a reference to enjoy music. If one hears live music on a regular basis, however, it's difficult to not have it be part of one's reference. To "forget live", as has been suggested, is to miss out on a deeper appreciation of the stuff that is at the core of music making. And there really are components that reproduce those qualities much better than others. It's not always easy to determine why some do it better than others. If we are not intimately familiar with what those qualities are (live sound), how are we to recognize them, or their absence. Think of it this way: When we need to communicate with a person about something really important, wether it is to discuss an important business matter, or talk to a loved one about a deeply personal issue, what is the best way to do it? Is it best to send an email, send a recorded message, make a phone call, or do it in person?

Pedrillo, I agree with that there is some mysticism to all this; although I would not necessarily call it that. The word mysticism, to me, opens the door for the experience to be less than real, and verifiable; perhaps I misunderstand the meaning of the word. I encourage you to continue to focus on those things that you tried to describe; components that engage you, not components that do this or that piece of sonic soup better than some other component. I also use a Singer-modified EAR 834P, and I completely agree with you about it's ability to make music. It seems to let the music pass through it with minimal alteration to what I feel is at music's core. The fact that it is an inherently simple circuit probably has a lot to do with it.

There are some interesting thoughts here. For many of us, our goal is to have our stereo system come as close as we can make them into fooling us that we are hearing live music. We can argue whether that means we are being transported to the recording venue or if the musicans have set up in our listening room. I am fine with either argument, but for the record, I do feel like I am being transported to the venue where the recording was made.

Last Wednesday I was in Old Town in San Diego having dinner with my uncle and his main squeeze at a Mexican restaurant. There was a Mariachi band that seemed to be fixated on the table in front of me as they played there quite awhile. This Mariachi band wasn't what I have experienced before in Mexican restaurants. These guys were real damn good. Both their abilities to play their instruments and sing in harmony was really top notch. What really blew me away (and I don't mean that as a pun) was the trumpet player. I was impressed with not only how good of a trumpet player he was, but also how damn loud a trumpet is when you are only feet away from it. The sound of that trumpet was just thrilling to hear. I also thought about how hard it would be to capture the sound that I was hearing and reproduce it faithfully. I think if the sound of that trumpet was captured faithfully and played back at a realistic level (i.e. at the same level the guy was actually playing it live), most amplifiers would be driven to clipping very quickly. I think it would take wheelbarrows of watts and/or really sensitive speakers to come close to pulling that off. The only recording that I can think of right now that I own that comes close to capturing what I heard last Wednesday is the 12" version of Lionel Ritchie's "All Night Long." There is a trumpet blast in that song that will separate the men from the boys in the amplifier department.

I haven't heard the EAR 834P and I am not aware of what Singer does to them. I assume they swap tubes. I believe the EAR uses transformers for the MC input which is a deal killer for me. Oh, I hates me some mc transformers. I want an active gain stage for low output mc cartridges. I am pretty much at the point now that if someone has a phono stage that they think can beat my Counterpoint SA-2/SA-5.1 combo, they need to bring it over to my house and lash it up and prove it to me. The SA-2/SA-5.1 sounds so good it could bring tears to the eyes of man with no tear ducts. I am done chasing wild geese.