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"Circles, my mind is going round in circles......"

and getting nowhere, just like this thread.

Had you considered getting a digital delay or the like to lend a sense of distance to your recordings?

And some binoculars...like at the opera! (Just kidding MrT - I do understand your desire for a real concert hall perspective and it is just as relevant as those who want Diana Krall right in their lap...)

Mrtennis, to the contrary there is actually little dichotomy between accuracy of a recording and the live event.

That lowest of low level detail, the ambient or reverberant information of the recording hall itself where the magic of a live performance really lives and breaths life into the music is already embedded in even some of what we might consider our most inferior recordings. And if this is true then you might imagine what other magic is also embedded in the recordings.

I'm not saying there aren't inferior recordings. There are. But what I am saying is that there are far fewer 'inferior' recordings than what many of us currently believe.

And rather than look to the quality of the recording (yes it does matter) as the culprit one should look to the quality of the playback system itself asking why it is unable to retrieve and reproduce that lowest of low level information along with many other magical little nuances.

Even though this may seem preposterous to most any enthusiast who's been in this hobby for 10, 20, or 40 years the existence of this lowest of low level information can easily be demonstrated with most any Redbook CD.

In nearly every case our frustration must lie with the system. No matter how well-thought-out, how much was spent, how sota we think it is, nor how knowledgeable someone may seem the problems we experience are because of the shortcomings in our systems that were never properly addressed.

On the other hand, as somebody already pointed out you do have a dichotomy because you seem quite fond of last row seating. I've never heard of a company or engineer that places the recording mics that far back. So in your case, you probably could never get the 'live' perspective of last row listening from a playback system simply because such a recording mic perspective may not exist.

-IMO

Something else that has been overlooked: Not all of us are Classical Music lovers. The vast majority of my listening/tech work is done in intimate club settings, smaller auditoriums, and/or done with vocalists/instruments mic'd(or direct). Many of the nuances that he eschews are quite present in the live venues that(I'm certain) a number of us frequent, and deninitely- the ambience you mention.

Make that, "definitely."