Timlub,
A recording of that marching band would not sound like the real thing on my stereo system. That much is obvious. However, the fact that I can identify it as a marching band with certain specificity about types of instruments, orientation of players, type of venue etc leads me to the conclusion that it is better than 5% if you mean as it sounds from a seat high up in the stadium. If you mean how it sounds from one of the players points of view, no way. How real is it is very hard to say. At the very least it is dependent upon very subject perspectives, and there will never be agreement.
It's an interesting question, though. Suppose two people are listening to a piano over a car radio. One says, "You know, it's pretty damn amazing that we can be driving down the road in a car and recognize this music coming out of nowhere as a Mozart piano concerto. It really sounds quite good, and I'm loving it." The other one says, "No way. It sounds nothing like a real piano. Scale, timbre, dynamics, harmonics, they are all wrong. Switch it to talk radio."
After reading through this entire thread, I truly think either one of those guys could be right. One guy's 95% is another guy's 5%. I find the technology simply amazing and yet I realize that we still have a long way to go. To me it's not 95% or 5%. It is somewhere in that vast middle range. That's the best I can do to answer your question.
A recording of that marching band would not sound like the real thing on my stereo system. That much is obvious. However, the fact that I can identify it as a marching band with certain specificity about types of instruments, orientation of players, type of venue etc leads me to the conclusion that it is better than 5% if you mean as it sounds from a seat high up in the stadium. If you mean how it sounds from one of the players points of view, no way. How real is it is very hard to say. At the very least it is dependent upon very subject perspectives, and there will never be agreement.
It's an interesting question, though. Suppose two people are listening to a piano over a car radio. One says, "You know, it's pretty damn amazing that we can be driving down the road in a car and recognize this music coming out of nowhere as a Mozart piano concerto. It really sounds quite good, and I'm loving it." The other one says, "No way. It sounds nothing like a real piano. Scale, timbre, dynamics, harmonics, they are all wrong. Switch it to talk radio."
After reading through this entire thread, I truly think either one of those guys could be right. One guy's 95% is another guy's 5%. I find the technology simply amazing and yet I realize that we still have a long way to go. To me it's not 95% or 5%. It is somewhere in that vast middle range. That's the best I can do to answer your question.