How close to the real thing?

No way does a good microphone get less than 50% of real sound, at least not voice. I recorded a lot of voice on a mono Nagra with a Neuman Mic and it was VERY close to reality. I could compare one ear in the headphones to the other ear hearing live, and a good mic and a mono Nagra is amazing. Music may be far more difficult and stereo is strange.

Elizabeth,

I do not believe that even the best home systems are anywhere near 90%-95% percent in terms of realism, but I will qualify my statement by stating the obvious. There are many, many factors involved in what we consider to be "real" sound - too many to discuss in detail here. So, equipment aside, I will limit myself to three.

1- space/distance/time acoustics (aka room ambiance). This is pretty self-explanitory. Your room is not a concert hall. Or a sound stage. Through technical gimmickry (hardware) you can kinda sorta reproduce the same sound, but not really.

2- our perception of sound and how we process it (psychoacoustics). Neuron action potentials and other interesting stuff.

3- simple physics. A speaker is not a piano, a guitar, or a human voice. Although you can mimic those sounds closely enough that it the differences between live and recorded are almost indetectable to a spectrum analyzer, most people can still hear the difference. Well, except Bose customers anyway.

One can monitor the playback head of a Nagra and compare it to the line as well. Amazing machine.

I agree with Elizabeth. I've played a recording of a flutist, with the flutist that made the recording standing between my speakers playing along with herself, and I can tell you the recording - which was far from SOTA - sounded a heck of a lot better than 5%. More like 90%. And that was before I upgraded my speakers.

How many other people here have tried this test?

Where audio systems fall off IMO is when you need a lot of volume to be accurate. Some live instruments are LOUD. As for reproducing a piano, that's almost too easy. We have a piano, so I know what one sounds like live, and a great stereo can do a remarkable job reproducing it. Now my wife's 22" bass drum, that my system has a little more trouble with.

I mean no offense to anyone by this, including the OP (inevitably someone will take some, I'm sure), but I just gott'a get this out, and yes I am poking fun at y'all; to me this is the kind of wholly ridiculous speculation and pointless discussion over utterly meaningless minutia that makes me want to run screaming from the room when discussed among persons over six years old...OK, maybe over eight years old. I think there are persons over eight in this discussion (though I may be called into question here), so, Picture me screaming from this room. OK, you don't know what I look like. Picture that wonderful Edvard Munch painting, "The Scream" and that'd be a great metaphor for how I feel reading just a few of the posts here (no I did not linger long and read many so I may be missing some chestnut of wisdom that'd otherwise bring me greater enjoyment in listening to music at home). There, I said it. I feel better now. Go on with your discussion and ignore the screaming man in the corner, he's just a smart ass who needs to go to bed now.

67.76%

That's my final answer.

Oh.....I'm sooooooo sorry, but that's......EXACTLY RIGHT!!! Tell'm what he's won, Don Pardo!

Help me if you can
It's just that this is not the way I'm wired

-Maynard James Keenan