Is live reproduction the goal of audio?

It is the proverbial carrot-on-a-stick of audio. I agree, it can never be achieved. Yes, it is absolutely relative to the listener, and thus there are no absolutes. The goal of the audio industry is to perpetuate itself through pleasing their customers and or creating a demand for their products. You can market the stuff with all kinds of angles and theoretical goals. Ultimately it comes down to what pleases you...how do you want the stuff coming off that spinning disk to sound in your home. You may want it to sound just like a live performance, but if you attend many live performances, and that is your goal, I think you'll always be reaching for that carrot that is just beyond your reach. Sit back and enjoy the music, wherever you are listening. Like most things in life, as soon as you attach expectations to it, that takes you far away from the experience.

Marco

Aida I think said it best High End is the best (or closest) way to listen to music outside of a live performance. In other word, it's the next best thing.

How you perceive that is up to you since you are the one listening to your system the most. There are no rules, but I would assume people want accuracy and emotion to come through.

But don't get lost in the pursuit. I find myself getting anal about my system and making it perfect. I need to remind myself that the system is just vehicle to deliver music. If you think about your stereo more than music, then I think you are losing site of your goal assuming that it is the music.

It is relative...but electronics has as much to do with it as any thing else. It is a "whole" . If you want to duplicate the sound you must also capture the air as well as the notes. Your whole space ESPECIALLY the room has to have a say in the full ,and as close as possible reproduction of the whole musical experience. So enough with which brands can do what. And enough with the electrical engineer who knows nothing more about hi-fi than a doctor knows about life., Get it.

The goal of audio electronics and transducers is to sound as life-like as possible but this is not at all the same as "live".

Since real instruments have complex surfaces and venues have reflective surfaces that all radiate/reflect sound ....then the real thing is close to an impossibility for playback without a multitude of transducers and computer processing of signals.

An analogy would be a theatre play versus a movie.....the theatre is restricted to the stage where live actors can respond to eachother and the audience; it has major qualities in these dynamic interactions. A movie is flat 2D but an almost unrestricted visual palette for the director. Movies are edited and reviewed thousands of times to select the highest quality takes.

Both can be impressive but for very different reasons.

A movie will never fool you that it is real (even if it is impressive & engaging) and a live performance, so obviously real, will always be limited by the venue and the perfomers live abilities on that day.

To ACTUALLY perfectly reproduce a live orchestra is TOTALLY 100% impossible. Just as a television cannot create a living person. I my opinion the "GOAL" of home audio is to recreate as closely as possible the sound that the recording engineer hears during a LIVE session via the booth amplifiers and speakers. This is called "LIVE FEED". The live microphone passes thru playback amplifiers and speakers only; NO mixing boards or recording devices, or miles of cables, thousands of electrical components and connectors. This live studio playback type of sound is the same quality as you can hear when there is a live radio or TV program that has an in studio musician playing. The sound is clear, direct, with PACE, rythym, great dynamic range, without wow and flutter and a certain live "something" that is found in only the finest audio gear like Shroeder tonearms, SET amps, Supratek preamp, and high efficiency single frame full range speakers (Lowther). LIVE FEED is the goal and highest standard of comparison. Only the simplest (fewest components) and highest quality playback equipment can achievt this goal.