System that sounds so real it is easy to mistaken it is not live

The types of sounds playing through the stereo are usually a dead give away that it's the stereo. I don't have anybody in my house that's a great musician, or who can make a sound in my house sound like it was recorded in another acoustic space. Those recordings that have more pedestrian sounds like people simply talking, and were recorded in a space with a similar acoustic to my own, those have scared me a few times. One time I remember was when the system was on but I didn't know it, and a voice suddenly came over the speakers out of the blue. It gave me quite a shock. Another case was on headphones, of all things. I was listening to outtakes between tracks and in the recording some guy was laughing in the back ground. It sounded just like my friend's cackle and I got the impression he was somehow in the house when I thought I was alone in my house in Oregon and he was supposed to be in Florida with his girlfriend! 

Dispersion characteristics of real instruments tend to be very different than speakers, and that can be a giveaway. I read that Dunlavy tested his speakers in an anechoic chamber - on axis. He could get the speaker to fool someone in that situation so they couldn't tell if it was the real instrument playing in the anechoic space, or the speaker. Once you have a live acoustic space of moderate size it can be harder to fool someone in a blind test.  A drum kit played in a living room will create an intensity and impactful force of sound that I don't think any stereo speaker set can reproduce in that same space - and that's probably a good thing.  Possibly an array of speakers ready made just for the purpose could do it. 

NO! If anyone thinks recorded sound is superior to live sound(not amplified live sound) then that’s an oxymoron. They are saying they don’t like live sound(which is of course the standard simply by its very nature), that they prefer colorations which is their valid choice but it’s not real. I can hear Gordon Holt turning in his grave.

As I said in my post, I heard a concert recently that was live but was inferior to what I can hear on my stereo.

What is "real"? What a slippery hook on which to hang an aesthetic discussion of what makes something sound significant.

Wouldn’t we agree that a stereo that produces an intimate, detailed, textured sound of an oboe sounds more like an oboe -- more "real" if you wish -- than how one sounds at distance, off axis, in a church with less than great acoustics? If the latter one has some "live" quality that you prize, would you prefer a stereo that produces *that* than the one which is more significant sounding but lacks that "live" quality? 

In this example, the recording of the oboe has more presence, tonality, emotion, detail, and punch than the one heard live. So why wouldn’t the presence of all those qualities -- plus the emotion -- add up to greater "reality" where "reality" is best understood as "significance"? In my view, it does.

"standing on the side of the stage in 1972 and listening to Duane Allman and Dickey Betts play live is about as close to "real" as I have ever heard."

Duane died in 1971.

Did you mean "surreal"?

DeKay