Do we really know what "Live" music sounds like?

The musicians may not know what it sounds like from various seats in the concert hall. Nor what it sounds like in venues they have not performed in. Nor concert musicians what it sounds like in a recording studio and vice versa. Nor musicians recorded in Abbey Road studios what it sounds like elsewhere.

But anyone who cares, has normal hearing capabilities, and listens knows what it sounds like at that time in that location with whatever the source may be.

Is that good enough to assume we do know what music sounds like? If we don’t, so what? I don’t know what it sounds like on Mars. Won’t let that bother me too much. Nor if someone else claiming golden ears tells me I don’t know what music sounds like.

The perception of timbre is not only the perception of a "sound" but  the perception of a  meaningful sound...

We were conditioned to perceive human voice for a million year....

This is all we need to create an audio room...

A couple problems with this article. 

Unamplified live music is affected by the room. This has just as much or more bearing on the sound then an "amplifier."

Secondly, it depends on your position relative to the instrument or vocalist. As a guitarist, I sit behind the instrument. An acoustic guitar is going to sound different to me than it does to someone who sits in front of me. And if you're sitting off to the side it'll sound different. And if you're sitting in front of an amplified guitar cabinet it's going to sound a lot more like the recording than if you're sitting 50' away because guitar cabinets are close-mic'd. And if I move my head 1" it'll sound different. And on and on.

And do we really want it to sound real? Almost all recordings are post-processed. Why? Because live performances have real or perceived flaws or deficiencies. Or some instruments are too dominant in the live setting and must be dialed back. Or the room doesn't have enough reverb, or too much reverb. Or slap echo. And so on.

And I'll end with our limited acoustic memory. How do we remember what "real" is? A good example is an Anderton's YouTube video called Head or Tread. Rob Chapman, a very experienced musician and guitar company owner, did a blind test of various tube amps, solid-state amps, profilers (computers that mimic an amp) and pedals to determine which was an amp head and which was a pedal. He owns some of these amps and the profiler. He got almost all of them wrong, including the amp he uses at most of his guitar clinics. And again, according to studies, musicians are supposed to have better acoustic memories than the average person.

These posts reveal the bias in Audiogon towards classical and acoustic music.  Now, that is not to attack the style of music nor those who love it, but it does reveal the lack of a baseline that serves as a foundation for much of the discussions on Audiogon.

Person A:  "What do you want to eat?"  

Person B:  "Apple Pie."

Person A:  "For dinner?"

Person B:  "Oh, I thought we were talking about dessert."

The point being, there is a huge difference between classical and other forms of acoustic music that is intended primarily to be unamplified and rock/pop/most jazz etc. where the mics, amps, and speakers are PART of of the instrument.

I'm sure different systems do better with one or the other. 

Point being, I don't think there is a singular sound of live music.  It depends on genre.  We each tune our systems to sound best with our chose genres.  At least that seems logical to me. 

The majority of my attendance at concerts is to classical or folk, all acoustic.

The question as to the younger set is well framed though - I wonder how many attend non electrified concerts.