My sixteen year old son holds that view based, I think, on rock concerts and the outdoor concerts he has heard at the Montreal Jazz Festival over the years. His main beef is with the fact that at live events you can't clearly hear the words of vocals. I think that with most performances being over amplified by going through pa systems of dubious quality and being equalized, he may have a point. For my part, I believe that it is very difficult to top a live event. Firstly, it involves more than just hearing the performance in front of you. You can see the performance, feel the audience, smell what is going on (particularly at rock concerts...). Nothing compares to the live event. When I was younger, the acid test for a band was whether it sounded like it's recordings when seen live. I can tell you the Stones going back to 1965 couldn't pass that test. As rock albums became more and more a product conjured up in the studio, the link between the live event and recordings became more tenuous. So I gave up on linking the two to any great degree. When it comes to acoustic performances, in a good hall, I have yet to hear a system that can really duplicate the event. Even live music by buskers or by musicians playing in malls and the like has an immediacy lost in recording. The one thing that I find missing in recordings is the leading edge of sounds, the initial attack of the instrument. The other much broader area where recordings fall short is in reproducing the acoustic space in which music is performed. This frontier can only be reached, I believe, with multi channel systems. Unfortunately, their association with HT and the well-entrenched two channel bias of high-enders is making the likelihood of these systems succeeding less likely. That any individual prefers the recorded sound to the live event is a question of taste and expectations. I love live recordings, warts and all, to me they sound more like someone documenting a real event than a bunch of people cutting and pasting. The Maxwell Street recordings of Robert Nighthawk come to mind. The sound in and of itself may border on the atrocious to the ears of folks used to slick productions, but the music is the blues. The only way of experiencing it is through these recordings. Bottom line: the whole question, put in terms of mutual exclusion is a bit bogus; the live event and recorded music should each be enjoyed for what they are. That we tend to compare the two is the "Absolute Sound" syndrome. The only valid comparison of this sort, to my mind, is to compare an acoustic instrument or group of acoustic instruments that could actually fit in your listening room. That is my main criteria for judging a sound system. We simply are not that well equipped at this time for comparisons of the live version of large scale works to their recorded versions to be valid. Music is to be enjoyed, so that when too many questions spoil the fun, one should step back. To know a living thing is to kill it.
