"I am there" vs. "They are here"

Wonjun, you pose a most fascinating question, which is obvious and very important, annoyingly so..just because I never thought of it myself. (-; I haven't read all of the above replies, except for Gregm's, which I find brilliantly accurate. In my opinion, many well and closely recorded solo instruments, can give you the "they are here impression". The Impulse recording of "Swing low Sweet Cadillac" with Dizzy Gillespie et al, which I heard last night, put Dizzy and his men together with his highly appreciative audience right into my listening room. Another recording which does this perfectly,is "For Duke", as another example and there are many, many more, of whatever musical genre. As has been said above, the more and more a recording team takes care to capture the natural accoustics of the recording venue, the more you get a chance to be transported "there", if you have the equipment, so well described by Gregm. Here a magnificent harmonia mundi LP, "Fête de l'Ane" does this for me, as do many of the early Mohr/Layton recordings of symphonic music of the CSO in their old hall in Chicago. Not that my system can capure the entire volume of the hall, but with the lights out, my ears are fooled to be in a presence of a soundspace, which in all its directions is much much larger than my listening room. This effect can of course be most easily achieved with any decent recording of organ music, done in a big cathedral, with tremendous reverb from all possible directions. Here the accoustics of the recording venue easily override the accoustics of your room and- again with the lights out - you will find yourself transported into a huge sound space, with the music coming at you in huge waves, which- if you have enough bass energy - can be quite frightening at times. So much for my 2cents and thanks again for bringing this fascinating subject to our attention!
Cheers to all! Detlof

"I am there" is of course the correct ideal model of what we want a music reproduction system to accomplish. But Sndsel and Danner (above) have gotten to the crux of our shared dilemma as critical listeners - what you might term the "Audiophile Condition". By far the two most important variables affecting a system's ability to approach this ideal are the recording itself and the room in which we listen to playback. Unfortunately, and paradoxically, these are precisely the areas in which we have the least amount of control: none, in the case of the recording; and usually very limited (and almost never to the ultimate degree) in the case of the room. If these starting conditions were effectively dealt with in our playback systems first, I strongly suspect that any competent (and competently assembled) high-end component chain could transmit the "I am there" sensation to near the limit that two-channel reproduction allows (although this may not be so high to begin with - theoritcally more so with some sort of multi-channel scheme, but this leads us back to the optimization of the recording process [and let us not forget the visual aspect, basically unaddressable but for to close one's eyes!]). Is this conundrum - our essential lack of control - what directly results in our becoming susceptable to "audiophilia nervosa"? I would like to able to think so, but I frankly doubt it. I suspect our preoccupation with gear would, alas, probably persist even if all our recordings and listening rooms were idealized tomorrow. This is because gear is just sexier, more of a status symbol, and upgrading and tweakage are more receptive (not more productive!) outlets for our neuroses, than purpose-built rooms and recordings bought "as-is" will ever be. But think about the further implication of all this: It also means that we may really prefer to wallow in our audiophile tendencies over and above what is, after all, the ostensible aim of any high-end system and its owner - to enjoy listening to music reproduced in our homes with as little distraction, and as much suspension of disbelief, as we possibly can! Let's put that in our peace pipes and smoke it a while.

Detlof, Great mention of a great Impulse recording. "Swing Low Sweet Cadillac" is Dizzy at some of his most memorable. Dont be afraid to get the remastered CD version in the LP styled box. It is very well done. Sorry to drift off topic, but this is very noteworthy music.
"You are there" was my preferred description when I had it all just so........Frank

Great post and replies. I tend to agree that the more resolving systems provide more of the “I am there”, but I am in the minority because what I ENJOY is the “they are here”. Maybe that is the reason every time I upgrade my system I can hear the improvement, but am somewhat not as satisfied. That probably has to do with my taste in music. I would imagine the majority of listeners here are classic/jazz fans. That FIM Pawnshop SACD is great and if all of my music was recorded like that I may feel differently. However the fun is sucked out of most of my studio recorded disks with my current system. Music like Floyd, Jewel, and Stevie Ray are shrunken down to a distant stage. My system is Sony/CJ/Virgo. What can I do to bring Jewel back into my room???

Joekras, tweak the system to death before upgrading again; power supply, direct power lines, cables off the floor, support/ coupling & de-coupling for source, speakers & electronics, speaker placement... you can have lots of fun -- and maybe bring the Vaughan Bros closer to home!

Cheers!