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

This post will spare me to wrote one.... Anyway it is better said than mine would and he says it all... Thanks to the poster...

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.

 Re

I'll find out tonight listening to Chris Potter at the Jazz cafe in Philly 

@firberger

I’ll find out tonight listening to Chris Potter at the Jazz cafe in Philly

nice! enjoy! c potter is one of my faves among modern day saxophonists, he is such a brilliant artist, very accessible beautifully crafted music and a very nice low key personality

Of course we do.

Unless you have a very limited musical palette that only consists of amplified music, then you know exactly what live instruments and vocals sound like.

Some of my most enjoyable musical experiences have been "live".

Rigoletto, Turandot, or La Boheme at the Met

Bryn Terfel, Cecilia Bartoli, Joyce DiDonato or Renée Fleming at local recitals

Buddy Rich and his orchestra or Woody Herman and the Thundering Herd at the Commodore Ballroom

It seems that most people set up as the standard to compare their systems to; "sounds like live music or an instrument they are familiar with. That certainty is a noble aspiration, but in my opinion impossible to meet. An audio system is a series of electronic pieces of equipment trying its hardest to sound like wood or metal instruments in which string are struck, bowed, plucked... or blown through with small pieces of wood vibrating or air from the musicians lungs flowing through complex passageways and escaping out the other end. How can pieces of electronic equipment sound "just like" this complex system that generates music. To add to this what is the listener basing his comparison to? A concert attended to in a specific hall. First audio memory is extremely fleeting. I forget exactly how quickly it fades but it is seconds. Second the musical instrument that you are saying your system sounds exactly like will change it sounds based on the size of the hall, how filled the hall is with listeners how many other musicians are around playing, the humidity etc. These influences all affect the sound one hears so one piano played in one location will not sound like another piano played in another location not to mention who made the piano and how in tune it is. Now you play this recorded music in a living room, your basement, a dedicated listening room, a room that has been treated one that has not been treated etc. All this makes me very puzzled with how people tout how their system reproduces music just like what they heard at such and such concert. The best one can say is my system is extremely musical and gives me the impression of what I remember instruments or a concert sounding like. You can talk about decay, harmonics and on and on which are all very important for creating a live accurate sound but one can only approximate the sound of an instrument and will never truly sound like that concert you fondly remember or that instrument you play. The last item I always consider when listening to a review of how great a system sounds is that everyone hears the same sounds differently.