Sat front row at the symphony...

Every time I improve my tonearm I think that NOW the system sounds like live music.

Then I go upstairs to the grand piano ...

Front row may not be the “best” place to sit, but in some halls it is the most impressive place for unforgettable experiences. That applies to i.e. Philharmonie in Berlin. 

I had the opportunity to perform in the Berlin "Philharmonie" .   During rehearsals I was able to go out in the hall and listen to the orchestra.  When I returned, my colleagues asked what the hall sounded like.  I told them that I was amazed at how the Germans had re-invented monophonic sound.  It was like listening to an orchestra from one end of a long funnel !  There was absolutely zero of the effect that we audiophiles refer to as "imaging".  By design ?

mahler123,

You're right.  I have known a few professional musicians who aren't interested in an audiophile home system.  They get plenty of exposure to live natural sound in their work, so for recreation they are content with run of the mill sound.  I even met an elderly brass player who gave up playing his instrument soon after he retired.  He wanted to pursue other interests outside of music.  

But I have also known other pros who have good audio systems.  A pro violinist friend owned Maggie speakers with modest electronics and agreed with me about the uncolored tone of those speakers compared to dynamic speakers.  He cared about both live and audio system sound.  He played and owned an expensive Ruggieri 17th century violin, but didn't care to spend significant money on better audio electronics.  Later, he got a modern violin by a maker he met.  I played this modern violin, and it was quite good for its tone.  It would be valued today at $30-50K and offered more sonic pleasure than any uber expensive set of audio electronics.  As an excellent amateur violinist, I share the priorities of my pro violinist friend.

It seems that you have good ears for objectively describing sound, and know that close distances offer maximum detail.  I don't deliberately listen for extraneous nonmusical sounds that are only heard close up, but merely tune out the extraneous sounds because I am too busy enjoying the musical details.  It is still a fact of nature that mechanical sounds are part of any instrumental or vocal sound.  The first row (better yet, the stage) reveals everything, warts and all, but the balcony only a shadow remnant of the total tone.  The only thing the balcony offers is an interesting visualization of the instruments, which I admit is hidden from the 1st row.

As for fatigue, I listen at soft levels, so I have no fatigue.  Extraordinary clarity in my audio system enables me to be satisfied at soft levels, whereas people with less revealing dynamic speakers and euphonic electronics need much higher SPL's to get reasonable detail.  String quartets from the 1st row naturally are at 40-50 dB with peaks of maybe 75 dB.  A Mozart orchestra is about 60-70 dB mezzoforte.  Of course, Mahler can yield 100+ dB with all the brass blasting away.  But there are plenty of soft passages in Mahler.  The long opening of the 1st symphony is about 20-30 dB, before the buildup to the first cymbal crash.  In the balcony, the impact is considerably diluted and muddied.  

terraplane8bob,

See if you can find the Absolute Sound article on top 10 concert halls, about 1985.  Earlier I wrote about how the 25th row of the Musikverein (#1) was pure reverberant muddy garbage, but the 5th row was quite good.  I never got the opportunity to sit front row center.  I envy your pro experience of having played on that stage.  For listening, I would choose a close seat in any high school lecture hall over the 25th row in the Musikverein or any other esteemed hall.  There is a lot of ignorant hype from audio writers with limited musical experience.

While in Vienna, the host of my group let us organize several string quartets.  We each played for 5 min in an Esterhazy palace.  I have no idea of how much furniture was in the palace 300 years before I played there.  Listening fairly close to other groups, the sound was reverberant garbage.  The high society people 300 years ago were not sound critics, but were there to hobnob with each other and chatter without paying much attention to the music, just like today.