Are you troubled by the imaging of a symphony orchestra?

+1 @melm 

My memory of sitting many rows back I still seemed to be aware of section placement. Especially watching the conductor as they notify cues all around.

This is why I like mid hall seating. I hear the proper placement of instruments, yet the orchestra presents a cohesive sound.

@mglik 
Can you describe the image that you hear on recordings?
Are these older or modern recording techniques?

I listen to orchestral music very often. On most all my recordings, the musicians are where they should be. It is very important to me that they are. But, the quality and method of the recording is also very important in making one recording being better than another.

If this is happening on all your orchestral recordings, I would have to assume something else is amiss. Perhaps start with checking speaker placement, room treatments, etc.

I have heard several halls where it makes little difference whether you 
sit in the front row or the last in balcony, acoustics are  that good .

Of course they are VERY rare .

My experience with concert halls is, sadly, limited to US venues.  Severance Hall in Cleveland comes to mind as a venue where I have yet to sit in a compromised acoustic.   The first row at Severance is way further back than is usual.

Another US venue that I have found to be superb is the Palladium in Indy.  It is a new hall, and benefited from a very careful and deliberate design to ensure superb acoustics. 

Other halls have exhibited a wide range of diversity, and there have been a few that are badly compromised no matter where you sit.

It is my understanding that there is not a direct correlation between halls that are good for listening being also good for recording.   I've not generally found the Cleveland recordings in Severance to be of similar quality to the old days in the Masonic Hall. 

@schubert 
Please share.  Which halls are these?

In New York the worst hall is Philharmonic Hall.  No one has ever said anything good about it.   They have redone it at least 4 times, never with much success.  They had recently planned to do a total tear out of the present hall and re-do it in a modern format (no proscenium and no seat very far from the stage) but they ditched that as they could not find a temporary alternative.  So it seems they will go forward with another half a-- fix, which is mostly ripping out the first few rows and moving the orchestra forward.

Carnegie is the world's most overrated hall IMO.  It has large balcony overhangs where the sound goes to die.  The hall also has many curved surfaces that focus the sound towards the middle seats and to the upper balcony.  Better sound there means compromised sound elsewhere.  There are those who think the center of the uppermost balcony contains the best seats in the house.   And at 3671 seats it is just too large.

The general acoustic state of concert halls in the US is not very encouraging--though there are exceptions.  Creating a great sounding concert hall should not be very difficult, really.  Just find one somewhere in the world that sounds great and copy it brick for brick.  But that's not something that adventurous architects and their civic promoters seem to want to do.