How close to the real thing?

Irv,
You can add MBL's to the 'live' category. Set up properly, a tough one, most shows don't allow for proper set ups for anyone, and a system as complex as the MBL's take time and space. BUT, when set up properly they're magic.

On the Sound Labs, I LOVE them--and you're 100 percent correct about their tonal/spatial characteristics...just right for my taste--an amazing product.
Irving M Fried, of IMF and Fried fame, used to show omnipolar frequency response of speakers--and did so more than 30 years ago. It was a.) ahead of its time b.) ambitious c.) evo/revolutionary thinking.
No body else (correct me here if I'm wrong {usually am}) does this any more. Why? Because the results are terrible.
Just as Jim Thiel showed Step Response Information, which displays the 'capture' of the drivers releasing the energy into the room as a unit body, either 'in phase' or not, with time function, lead lag information--strangely, almost NO ONE does this. Why, because their responses look really, really bad.
The now 21 year old design, the CS5's had a virtually perfect step response.
It would be interesting to see the Sound Lab Step Response,
because of it's design, it would almost have to be perfection too. Scientific (not evidence, because the ear is the final arbiter there) validation that what we're hearing is as it should be.

Great post.

Larry

"BTW, IMO people that buy audio equipment aren't heroes, people that engineer them are."

Well said Irvrobinson, but that only serves to prove my point. True heroes are self-effacing. Bravo!

When I was in a band (quite awhile back), I had the use of a studio reel to reel (can't remember which make) that I loaned to record my own piano in my house. The replay through my speakers (Impulse H1 horns) was close to the real thing on playback ( through the said speakers).
So 5% is way of (IMHO) to my own personal experience.
I would say IMO that we are up to 90%+, and if ones hi-fi can differentiate between different makes of Instruments, ie a Strat from a Gibson, a Steinway (the baby)from a Bosendorfer (the daddy) then that % maybe even higher.
Again, 5%? one may need to upgrade ones gear.

I wish that I could understand by what measure you guys are able to quantify realness. Is it information? IMO, realness is more than that. A high resolution photograph can yield all the empirical information of a direct viewing, but it's not the same, is it? We can go back and forth between the photo and the object and never be able articulate anything lacking in the photo. But still, it's less to me. I'm not saying that I've never been momentarily fooled by a sound coming from a speaker, especially when it comes from outside the plane, but to me, that's not nearly enough to make a case for realness. I suspect a system will alway's be limited, if only by the differences in the way that instruments and a speakers excite a room response.

I would like to hear the MBLs, but have never had the opportunity. Perhaps that fortunate, because I probably can't afford them, my room probably won't support them, and they are so ugly even my understanding spouse would have to call foul.

The step response you speak of, which is really a time-domain impulse test, is interesting, but I don't think anyone has ever shown a correlation between good sound and a perfect impulse test. As I recently posted in another thread, and just my personal opinion, I consider the use of first-order crossovers, necessary to achieve the perfect time domain performance the CS5's demonstrate, are just a marketing gimmick, and lead to more problems than benefits.

The Soundlabs achieve linear phase response because they are a single driver, have no crossover, so naturally they are good in the time domain, but does that really contribute to their great sound? I don't know, but I doubt it.

I was very tempted by the Soundlabs, but their trade-offs didn't quite suit me. And they're huge. But when the A1s are good, like on stringed instruments, they are most engaging speaker I've ever heard.