Enough detail or too much?

No arguments from me in general.

Seriously, how can one expect an orchestra playing on a system in most listeners rooms to sound like the real thing in a large concert hall? Its not possible. There is too much difference in scale. Even with a fantastic recording, most any home system will scale down the performance in some way to get it to "fit" and be presentable in a much smaller listening room. That's just the way it is. Pick your reproduction and enjoy it, but the fact is it is only a reproduction and all reproductions give up something.

I agree it can be hard to get violins in orchestral recordings to sound smooth and natural when they should. This is an area that I believe good tube amplification can often help, at least that was the case in my system.



And yes, pianos are very dynamic and hard to get right but I've heard it done pretty well on various systems including mine.

Read the article by Robert Greene. It gives good insights into how and why recorded music doesn't sound like a good concert hall seat.

I agree with you on all of this. On the detail front, what I think you're hearing with a live orchestra is a multi source phenomenom. Each instrument (point source) has its own individual dimension of sound (image), mixing all these individual images tends to homogenize the sound to some extent, you don't generally hear individual instruments.

Audio systems compress this multi-dimensional sound into a stereo soundstage, images are much less dimensional than the 'real' thing, thus, there is less of this homogenizing effect. Perhaps this less integrated/holistic sound causes the brain to focus more on detailed information of individual instruments, missing imaging cues might evoke a different listening process.

I would think it has something to do with imaging because there is even greater detail with live music, we just don't hear it as such.

Just curious how others feel.

I am listening to Cat Empire "Live on Earth" at this moment and I don't really share your concerns at all - not even a little, actually not one tiny bit.

"Too much detail" means something is wrong. If it were accurate truthful detail then there would not be such a thing as too much. Room acoustics are a good 50% of what you hear and a good 50% of most problems. There are very few good concert halls and good concert hall seats and the same goes for audio systems with precious few good recordings to boot!

The two qualities that I listen for is timbrel accuracy and if I can hear "all the way back" into the hall or venue. The Orchestra when reproduced should also convey a sense of power and weight,both ends of the spectrum. If all this is conveyed to the listener, congratulations on a fine system.