Why I like my home system better than live music

I listen seriously only to classical music. The worst live sound I've ever heard is light years ahead of the best home-audio system I've ever heard. They are just two entirely different realities.

-Bob

I prefer live concerts for classical music. Here, the Colorado Symphony performs in a hall with sub-par acoustics, but I find even poor halls enhance classical performance. I attend many bluegrass/folk/acoustic music concerts, too because the performers are so good live (headed to Telluride for the bluegrass festival this weekend, as a matter of fact). But I wear ear filters for virtually all live non-classical concerts because they are all TOO LOUD. Live music provides unique enjoyment, and so does my home system. Also, I can turn the home system down!

Let me add a bit to what I said.

Sound quality varies tremendously at live concerts, but it varies tremendously on recordings at home, too. Sound quality is only one part of musical enjoyment, though. I appreciate live music and recorded music as related, but separate, artistic expressions. And so I need a lot of both. No matter how good my home system is.

Forth row center at Symphony Hall (Boston), has been my reference for the past four years. I can tune and tweak my home system, but the BSO live is my reference point.

The best live music I've ever heard at a concert was Pink Floyd at Ohio Stadium 1988.. I was actually outside the stadium (didn't have tickets). We decided to just go down there to be around the event. and the sound was absolutely incredible. Clear, powerful, thundersous, precise. Never heard anything like it before or since. No home system could ever touch the clarity and power of the music that day. But that was an exception for concerts, not the rule.