Home HiFi better than Live?

I'm glad I managed to bring some agreement. I've thought for a long time that, unless the recording engineers are genuinely trying to recreate a live performance (as they usually are with jazz, classical, and some rock/pop albums) that the recorded medium is very different, and is best treated as such. Some of my favourite studio albums (Crowded house woodface being an example) are well mixed because the engineer followed the rule of separation : instruments in the same frequency band must be separated in the stereo mix, instruments in the same part of the stereo mix must be separated by frequency. Following this rule leads to a wonderfully airy sound where one can have many different things "going on" without them interfering. Of course it's about as far removed from a live performance as you can get, but it works for me. Many studio albums that try to sound live by making the stereo mix resemble a stage setting end up sounding muddled because the drums are all crushed together in the center, overlapping the vocals, and having bass panned to one side just sounds odd. Engineering is a real art .. as much as the performance itself.

I've been obsessed with this crazy hobby on and off for almost twenty years now. I've heard some pretty great systems in that time, and currently love my SET/horn system at home that brings the performance right into my living room up close and personal. I also have a good friend who owns an amazing high-end all-Levinson system, as the original poster mentions they do. His system is set up to the nines, and is in a great listening room. I prefer my SET system, but his does have some merits that mine does not (and vice-versa). That said, I have NEVER been able to achieve the kind of adrenaline-driven deep and primal satisfaction, from ANY of those systems that I've heard, that I consistently experience in the best of the live performances I have enjoyed. I absolutely get profound enjoyment from hearing my system singing for me, all by myself and comfortable in my home...and it frequently gives me goosebumps at how real it can sound. But the idea that it can actually replace or improve upon a great live performance in a good venue is utterly ubsurd to me. The experience is entirely different, unless you are dead to the world around you! I mean no offence here, but live music has moved me in ways that are entirely unique to that experience. I've also had horrible experiences listening to live music for a whole variety of reasons (bad performance, bad venue, bad audience, etc.). Those things that are unique to live music cannot be replicated by ANY machine as they are all about life, energy, interaction and electricity (between living beings...performers and audience). Take the music out of the picture just to illustrate a point: Stand alone in a room and you may feel a certain way. Add one person, even without any verbal interaction, and your experience will be entirely different. At a few hundred people and, again, you change the experience entirely. It may start to sound a bit new-age and spiritual, but there is no denying that we are all emitting energy as long as we are alive, and perhaps even to some extent when we are not. Some of that energy can be quantified, and some is entirely invisible and much of it may remain mysterious and unknown. Bring music into the picture now, and actually start to deliberately express and guide the energies of hundreds of indivisuals en masse and you have one very powerful experience (pleasurable or not is up to the individual and circumstances). Remove the crowd, and replace the performer with a machine that only emits one tiny aspect of that energy (the music), and your experience will be ENTIRELY different...there is certainly no debating that in my mind. Bottom line for me: I do enjoy both experiences, but my system only bears a resemblence to listening to live music in only a very surface regard. If you are talking strictly about an AURAL comparison of the two.....well, why even bother! We all have at least four other senses that come into play, and I'm quite certain there are more that we're unaware of that come into play as well. We also have a heart, a soul and a brain (though any one of those three can be debatable with the individual ;-), as well as our filters of individual experiences, all of which processes all of this, much of which I really doubt we completely understand. Too many thoughtful responses to this post to keep track of, but the comparison between porn and making love someone made, illustrates the same concept I am trying to.

If a person is attending a concert purely for the sound quality they are missing the point of music! One of the most significant aspects of the experience is the experience itself. If the local symphony is playing my favorite piece, the experience is as enjoyable as the music. A concert is more than just notes.
To a limited degree home audio is to music what video games are to sports. The experience of watching or playing the sporting event on a little screen is nothing like being in the game. A concert is being in the game.
It doesn't matter if the concert is classical or the most repulsive rap or speed metal. It has less to do with the quality of the sound than it does the quality of the experience. Regardless of the musicians, people attend because they want to hear the music as it is being played by their favorite musicians. Sure, some concerts sound better than others, but sitting in a chair at home is nothing like the concert experience.
The two cannot really be compared. Live music is not just an aural experience. Many other senses are involved, and in many cases all of the senses are involved. Especially if the musicians stink!!!
Don't confuse your prerecorded music with the experience of a live concert.

Thank you all for your insightful comments. In further refining my thinking on this, I am in agreement that there is an emotional part of the experience in live music that is impossible to capture in music software and that certainly I have never experienced orchestral music at home as good as in a concert in a great accoustical setting. I think that one observation that is most true is that most live concerts with amplified sounds are not as good as a good home HiFi from strictly a sound perspective, unamplified concerts, I admit are better.
I myself usually go to live music events atleast a couple of times a month and more often than not bought CD's of the performing artists shortly thereafter, to remind me of the experience and enjoy various pieces with more intensity at home.
It was not my intention to say that the Live Music experience was not as good as a good home HiFi but, I may be getting a bit obstinate here, the sound itself more often than not is better at home. Now the glass of single malt and a Cuban cigar may have a lot to do with that observation sometimes but by and large when I am not sharing the experience, I like it better at home.

Now there you bring up a whole different debate Fwangfwang....DWL: Drinking While Listening! Alchohol, without any doubts whatsoever, impairs all your senses, including your hearing. That single malt is stopping you from enjoying your expensive high-end system to the fullest possible degree! Really!! You PAID all that money for that remarkable system so you really should be reaping all the benefits...every bit of lifelike realism that it has to offer. So just box up your collection of single malts, and if you have a wine collection you may as well just throw that in too cause those fine red wines are REAL BAD on your hearing...any good port by the way?! Port is the worst..you may as well just stand in a cold shower and tear up all that cash you spent on those fine components if you're DWL! So just carefully bubble wrap all those bottles and float them in a nice bed of styro peanuts in a big-ass box (use a crate if you have more than 20) and ship all that nasty hearing-impairing liquor to me via Fedex...I know just what to do with it, and you'll thank me once you hear the difference listening sober can make!!! Hang onto those Cubans though, I don't smo....er, well, they don't do anything to impair your hearing so they're OK! But get those bottles of fine wines and liquors out of your house and let me take care of them for you! I know you'd do the same if you saw a fellow Audiophile abusing his hearing that way! Any of you other folks doing the DWL thing, I'd be happy to help in any way I can. The worst offenders are those really expensive red wines, 20+ year-old ports and fine single-malts...just write me off the list and I'll send you my address and you can ship them off to me for 'recycling'! No need for thanks...happy to do my part!