How to get the impact of a live concert?

Can there be one answer to this question?

The "live" sound of a paint-peeing rock band (which as Bobo notes, often sucks -- in a good way), and the "live" sound of an un-amplified singer/songwriter are very different things (and so on for many different genres), so getting them right might ask for pretty different systems.

IMHO, many of the comments above seem to have rock, or large scale music, in mind.

John

"Most times concert sound sucks.Just loud."

VEry true, but sometimes it is done well, sometimes to essential perfection. THose are the ones I have heard that I use as a reference.

Omnidirectional speakers and the OHMs I use specifically are uniquely able to to deliver a "live sounding" sound in my home. Other conventional design speakers and planars I use or have used in the past, less so, and better suited for how most of use are used to listening to recordings. These are two uniquely different things, different ways of presenting the same recordings. WHich is better will largely come down to a matter of preference.

The simplest answer to the original question is: It can't be done. The impact of a live performance can't be duplicated in the home; no playback equipment is good enough to replicate it faithfully. You may get close (although, "close" means different things to different people), but I think Swampwalker and Ryder got it right.

As the OP reminds us, it's not the volume he is after, and some keep telling him that yes you need the volume. Sure, if you are talking about rock music you need a healthy volume. But the impact of what sheer volume brings to the "impact table" can't be separated from the volume (size) of the space that the music is being played, or played back, in; that's always going to be a limiting factor. How 92db FEELS from a middle of the hall seat in a concert arena is going to be very different from the way 92db feels in a listening room at home. IMO, what gives music impact is the speed of the transients, the micro dynamics, not simple loudness. I've heard plenty of stereo systems that can play at "concert levels" and that sound dead and unexciting, and simply made me run out of the room. I have heard fewer systems that at moderate volumes get a lot closer to the feeling created (for example) by a live kick drum and snare, and which as a result allow the bass playing on the music to be much more realistically in synch (groove) with the drummer, and not just a stodgy mess. That's what creates impact and excitement in playback.

Live jazz in a good club can give you the impact Ecruz is talking about. Here in the Bay Area, the two Yoshi's clubs are fine-sounding rooms with excellent Meyer Sound systems. But even unamplified, the impact of a cymbal crash -- you can feel it in your chest! -- is something I've never heard reproduced well on a stereo system. How come?

Smoke a fat one and crank it up to 11.