Thank you all for the responses, I think you all pretty much answered Viridian's question for me.
I like to "see" the instruments in front of me when listening.
Take this one for example, master trumpet player Andre Heuvelman's gorgeous rendition of "Oblivion";
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L7PdCueEpE
on the website for the album download, if you scroll down, there is couple of photos from the session where one can see the musicians placed in a half circle around the microphones, and that is also more or less what one hears when listening. Here is a link to liner notes;http://www.soundliaison.com/products-from-our-studio-masters/71-andre-heuvelman
from the "After Silence" liner notes;
I like to "see" the instruments in front of me when listening.
Take this one for example, master trumpet player Andre Heuvelman's gorgeous rendition of "Oblivion";
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6L7PdCueEpE
on the website for the album download, if you scroll down, there is couple of photos from the session where one can see the musicians placed in a half circle around the microphones, and that is also more or less what one hears when listening. Here is a link to liner notes;http://www.soundliaison.com/products-from-our-studio-masters/71-andre-heuvelman
from the "After Silence" liner notes;
After Silence was recorded with the musicians playing together in the same room, without headphones.The reason being that in our opinion that creates a number of musical and technical benefits....... The musicians interact much more as they would do in a concert situation...and as they are not ''separated'' by headphones the musicians are forced to create a musical balance...the need for compression to control levels is no longer necessary...we can use a minimalist microphone setup and there by reduce phase problems...since everybody is in the same room, the boxed sound which is so common in many modern recordings is absent...the sound of the room helps ''glue'' the sound of the recording. That sounds like an easy solution but bear in mind that in order for this to work:e studio has to have a good sound.....the musicians have to be very good and well prepared as it is very difficult to repair mistakes because of the ''cross talk'' between the instruments....we have to be very precise when choosing and placing the microphones...and the puzzle of placing the musicians at the right distance to the main stereo microphone pair and at the right distance to each other is very time consuming.