Sat front row at the symphony...

@czarivey   Well, most concerts I've been to the lady violists wear long flowing dresses or skirts.  While they like to keep their bowing arm free to move and so often have tops cut to the shoulders.

@viber6 

I mean no disrespect to you as a musician, but in my experience musicians don’t always make the best audiophiles.  I have a friend who is very well known violist who is perfectly happy using an AM transistor radio circa 1960 as his only piece of audio.  He knows music so well that I think his mind fills in whats missing.  The perspective that you describe having the brass blow up your butt while you play must be thrilling, but again you know the music so well that you are entranced when you get to experience facets of it in a unique way.  Is that really the experience that you crave if you are going to sit and listen to a recording a few dozen times?  I think the uniqueness would wear off and become fatiguing.

  I have sat first row, dead center, in Boston and Chicago (where I live), so close to the conductor that I could hear the noise made when his perspiration hits the podium.  It is a thrilling perspective, but not an experience that I care to repeat often.

  I have sat in every part of Chicago’s Symphony Hall over the past few decades, jand without question first row balcony takes the cake.  They are also the most expensive seats, so most listeners must agree.  It isn’t because the seats are the most comfortable.

Once I had the pleasure of some college students playing a 4 instrument string ensemble at my home. The warmth, volume (!) and nuance of 4 string instruments blew me away. My gear couldn't even get close to reproducing that.

It was later I concluded we listen to gear and not music. Sure music is playing through our gear but it's the gear we select, fuss with, trade, upgrade, lust after, plan for and play with. Music is merely the media for our gear to shine with. 

I go to live concerts all the time. I think it's all a different sort of listening experience. Vinyl. Digital. Cans. Big speakers. A big concert hall, club, small chamber hall. Each one has its own merit. You cannot go to a hall and hear Leonard Bernstein, but you can listen to him on your system. The atmosphere of the live venue is nearly impossible to recreate. But, then there are the recordings that were made to be recordings. I head Karajan's final concerts with the Berlin Phil in Carnegie Hall. I have never quite heard an orchestra sound like a small chamber group, with every single player seemingly connected to one another. So, true, that will have to live in my memory, but I do love being able to listen to Karajan on my big rig...

Thank you Mahler123 for your comments on this subject.  Good ideas well presented.