How close to the real thing?

Avguy, in order to do a valid test you would have to record your friend's piano in his room, and play it back in a similar venue. Most commercial recordings are made in much larger rooms than nearly any home will have. How big is your neighbor's room with the piano in it? Unless the room is at least 20x30 feet it's like a whale in a swimming pool compared to how most recordings with a grand piano are made.

For those of you comparing reproduction of an orchestra in a home to a live concert, no contest. You can't accurately reproduce 70 or so musicians in your listening room. The proportions are all wrong. The room will overload before you'll get loud enough, and the moving areas of the speakers are too small.

I've found most people are surprised by the accuracy of recordings of instruments reproduced in similar venues, where the instruments are played at volumes appropriate for those venues, and reproduced over a very good audio system.

I agree with the previous comment made about a small jazz band (usually keyboard or upright piano, sax, small drum kit, bass, and a singer). We have a local resturant that features acoustic jazz groups that play at very reasonable levels, and my wife and I usually comment about how similar the sound is to my audio system. Sometimes I think the expectations for live music are blown out of proportion in the high-end community.

Maineiac,
That group was Misty River (buy their album, they're good).
It was fun to have the girls show up each night at CES, play music and such.
That was 2005 CES.

Larry

Live-versus-recorded listening tests give the answer in a way. In well controlled tests people are hard to hear the difference.

http://seanolive.blogspot.com/2010/07/why-live-versus-recorded-listening

"Are we making progress and how close are we?"

I doubt it.

What you hear from a particular recording on your rig in your room is distinct in almost every way from what you hear at any particular live performance in a particular venue.

I question whether the absolute sound possible today is really that much better than what was achievable years ago. It is more readily available in more different configurations to more these days I would say and probably for significantly lower cost than prior if done right, so there has been progress in terms of delivering good sound to more, assuming one is interested in that.

That was 2005 CES.

It was the 2004 THE Show at the St. Tropez.