The Shure V15 V with a Jico SAS/B stylus VS The Soundsmith Hyperion MR and Lyra Atlas SL

@lewm I think unamplified jazz and classical are the only genres which provide a live 'reference' against which recorded sound can be judged.

My local concert hall is in the Sydney Opera House which has just undergone a 10-year A$300-million refurbishment.  This included about A$100-million to fix the acoustics of the concert hall.  I was at the first concert after it re-opened, and the change is quite remarkable.

My partner lives in the suburb that hosted the Sydney Olympic Games so we sometimes go to outdoor concerts in the main stadium.   Groups like Queen have awesome sound reinforcement systems, but many are very poor.

Ironically the opera hall in the Opera House is undersized (it was switched during construction) so we sometimes go to amplified opera performed on a floating stage looking across the harbour.  Crazy when you think about it!

@lewm That is exactly why you need subwoofers. I have no problem replicating the dynamics of a live performance. I can actually overdue it. 

That is a problem with some small clubs, the PA can screw up location cues. The drums can be unamplified, easy to locate. I find if you can sit up close, inside or under the PA speakers, outside of their blast zone you get a much better image, King Size. If there are two shows every evening I will buy tickets for both shows. Between shows I always get moved up to the front. 

The best way to get a live example of imaging is an unamplified string quartet. Even large symphony orchestras will image in a good hall. @richardbrand you need to sit dead center, 10 row, Boston Symphony Hall and you will have a fine image. 

One of the coolest things about our systems is you can get amazing imaging with any genre. Being able to isolate each instrument highlights the musicianship of the individual musicians.  

@mijostyn Peter Walker of Quad used to do A / B demonstrations of his electrostatic loudspeakers, which were hidden behind a screen. Often B was a live string quartet.

I am not talking about dynamics in what follows, but imaging! Not just imaging, but the pin-point imaging loved by reviewers but absent in my opinion from any un-amplified live music venue.

The role reflections play is remarkable, both from the surfaces of the recording venue and of the listening space. I will always remember the utter strangeness of sound without echo.

First time was in a big anechoic chamber (anechoic = no echo!). Totally disorientating. The second time was sitting on top of Iron Knob, an abandoned ore mountain looking over the Nullabor Plain (nullabor = no trees). The Nullabor Plain is possibly the world’s largest infinite baffle. The railway line goes straight for 297 miles. There’s nothing to reflect anything, except the ground. There were no birds, no rustling of the wind, just an occasional dust trail from a vehicle 50 miles away on its way to Perth. Absolute silence and equally disorientating. My conclusion is that a great deal of what we normally hear is reflection.

I have not been to the Boston Symphony Hall, but agree that logically the ideal sweet spot has to be on the centre-line. But how far back, or even forward? One obvious singularity is where the conductor stands. Unfortunately, the conductor is almost always too close to the nearest instruments to hear the intended balance. Where else? Maybe where purist recording companies put their microphones (I am thinking Mercury)?

Norwegian 2L recording engineer Morten Lindberg recognises that all recordings are an illusion. Why not put his multi-channel microphone tree where the conductor normally stands, but push the instruments back into a circle where they carry equal sonic weight from the conductor’s position? Works for me!

My favourite 2L recording is probably Australian pianist Percy Grainger playing Grieg’s Piano Concerto, recorded way back in 1921. The piano was originally recorded as piano rolls and is replayed on a modern piano with a symphony orchestra recorded in immersive sound.

In many other ways Percy Grainger was a century ahead of his time, but that is another story.

I need subwoofers to replicate the sound of small group jazz taking place 20 feet from my chair? I have to say no to that. None of the instruments get below 50 Hz, where my ESLs operate just fine, and there is no hall to reverberate in a small jazz club. Anyway my Beveridge system does have very articulate bass down to 20-30 Hz, owing to my transmission line woofers ( not subwoofers but woofers nevertheless, that operate below 80 Hz). My only point was that in live venues, imaging is not much better if at all better than what I hear at home.

Now, if I go to the Kennedy Center to one of the concert halls, that’s a different story.

@richardbrand I specified the distance, 10th Row. I grew up in the Boston area and my father had season tickets for many years. Of course reflections are a great deal of what we hear and to get a well defined image in any situation, real or imitation requires the right listening position and in real situations a bit of luck. Our own systems require a good room and intelligent set up. I have to admit that in most live situations you do not get a decent image but that is over ridden by the visual and dynamic aspects of the performance. When I watch concert videos I am too busy watching the performance to pay attention to the image. To pay attention to the image I have to close my eyes. At large indoor stadium concerts the sound is usually awful. I will only go to outdoor venues like Red Rocks and Boston's Harbor venue. The sound is still mono, but at least it is not being corrupted by extreme echo. 

The image that a recording projects is in itself an art form. It is fun to be able to pick out individual instruments and once in a blue moon a great set up can mimic real life. I saw the Dave Holland Quintet 3 times at the Regatta Bar in Boston. The recording "Not For Nothing" portrays that experience almost perfectly. I can close my eyes and easily take myself back to that performance. I saw Cecile McLorin Salvant  at the Blue Note in NYC and the recording "Dreams and Daggers" mimics that performance perfectly, scary perfectly. Neither recording has a perfect image as one could imagine it, but they replicate almost exactly what you hear at the real performance. I am also sure there are other recordings that do this, but these are two I was at the actual performance.  

The microphones recording symphony orchestras are hung above the orchestra with ambience microphones placed elsewhere in the venue. 

As @lewm stated the thing that really separates live performance from what we hear at home are the dynamics which are a function of bass performance and transient response. Both are absent from most systems. Image, Bass and transient response are the aspects of HiFi performance I have been chasing since the age of 13. I did not get close until I was about 22 and the I did not get to live performance levels accurately until about a year ago at the age of 69. It takes a full range line array from 18 Hz to 20 kHz, power and digital signal processing. There is a specific frequency response curve required to do this in residential spaces. You have to equalize every system following the measured response with a little by ear tweaking. This can only be done without detriment in the digital space. To get the best image the channels have to be equalized separately and have exactly the same response curve so that the volume of the two channels is exactly the same at all frequencies between 100 Hz and 12 kHz. No two speakers are exactly the same. Then you put them in different locations and they become very even drastically different. IMHO every audiophile should have a USB measurement microphone and an audio program for their computer. There is no other way to learn what one is listening too.