"Emotionally involving" music and your system...

I have attended some very emotionally moving concerts over the years. I have been moved to tears by the beauty of the music on quite a few occasions. I guess I am lucky, or maybe just happened to be in the right places at the right times.

That said, I have been fortunate and lucky enough to be able to put together audio systems which have come very close to duplicating the live experience and have literally moved me to tears with many of my recordings.

I know that many audiophiles think this can't be done in the home, but maybe it's just that you haven't achieved it personally.

It's not voodoo or bending the laws of physics at all; it's mainly common sense and paying attention to the myriad of variables in system setup. I tend to favor speaker and amp combinations that will produce a wide dynamic range over a wide bandwidth, with very low distortion. I pay close attention to the proper "tuning" and positioning of each component. Everything must be compatible, including the system wiring, and the room acoustics must allow the sound to bloom, or the magic is just not going to happen. The recordings must be excellent, as well, and on a highly resolving system you can easily tell when things are just as they should be. Overlooking the details will kill the delicate balance in the blink of an eye. Those overly concerned with WAF, and their decor usually never achieve very good sound quality (although the gear sure looks pretty sitting there).

Of course if you adopt a defeatist attitude before you start and tell yourself you can never achieve live sound, your odds of ever having it happen are, well, slim to none... Although the percentage of people who can consistently dial systems in to deliver this high level of sound is small, I have been fortunate enough to know a few of them in my many years as a music lover and audiophile.

Hey, maybe I should team up with Rives Audio, and after Rives fixes the room acoustics I could fine tune the system itself... What about it Rives?!

After reading Plato's post, I can confirm that I have attended several emotionally moving concerts right there in his home listening room. We've covered just about every genre of music, and what we didn't actually "hear" as the system produced a wide dynamic range over a wide bandwidth, we certainly "felt" its impact over a rather large sensory area of the human body. I feel very lucky to have had this kind of "emotionally involving" experience live by attending a concert and in the home after paying attention to detail in every aspect of the system's set up!

I saw a perfomance of Mozart's "Requiem" which was so beautiful. This is a piece of music that I truly love, but the live element added to the emotion.

It may sound corny to some, but I really enjoy many of the Broadway musicals. A recording is the next best thing to being there, but for me the connection with the music isn't quite the same.

Great thread!

Fab4fan, you make a good observation. Attending a live performance one does get to see the performers and the instruments being played and certainly that adds more sensory input and makes for a more emotional connection to the performance. When listening at home you have to visualize (if you can) the performers and musicians in your head.

I also find that when I'm watching and listening to my home theater setup that I'm not nearly as critical of the sound as I am when listening to music on my 2-channel systems. So the effect of adding the visual component cannot be ignored. And I've enjoyed a few Broadway performances myself. I don't find it corny at all. It's very visual there, as well, with the bright costumes, makeup, and choreography. It can be just about overwhelming, and of course, that is the intent in many cases.

Fairconn, I appreciate your kind remarks and feel fortunate to have shared so much good music with you. I would be remiss if I didn't acknowledge Dan Fanny's (American Hybrid Technology) contribution to my (any your) audiophile education. HP, of TAS thought very highly of Dan's Non-Signature phono stage; and as many who know him can attest, he does the best and most comprehensive mods to Acoustat Servo-charge amps known to mankind. Happy Listening!

I think the differences between recordings can be major, although the added interaction of audience and musicians can be much better.

Friends & I have been sitting down on Friday evenings to listen to and compare many different pressings of an agreed on piece of music (this past Friday it was Stravinsky's Firebird.) Some conductors have an affinity for the music in a way that the emotion comes through easily, and others produce a recording that is the musical equivalent of "white bread" or cardboard. I like the way Boulez brings new vitality to 20th century composers, while von Karajan or Bohm breathe life into Beethoven and Mozart. When you are listening to 8-10 versions of a piece in the same evening, the differences are immediate.

The best examples of "live" for me are a Mahavishnu Orchestra concert at the Auditorium Theatre in Chicago about 1970-71? I met someone years later and we talked about greatest concerts we were ever at, and it turns out that he was sitting in about the same row and position on the same night. His experience matched mine exactly!

Another memorable performance was hearing Solti & the Chicago Symphony Orchestra in rehearsal at Orchestra Hall for Beethoven's 9th Symphony. A week later they recorded it at the Kraennert Center in Urbana, IL for Decca's 25th Jubilee Anniversary (it was Georg Solti's 25 anniversary of recording with Decca.)