Does Your System Sound Like the Real Thing?

I truly think my stereo sounds MUCH better than live.
It may not sound the same, but when have you been to 2 concerts that sounded the same? how many were held
in accoustically correct rooms?

Of course we are all at the mercy of good recordings.

Instrument reproduction is very speculative, again, how a live instrument sounds in one place will vary greatly than another.
I love the fact that i can control my room to MY liking and enjoy it anytime i want.
I love live performances, but all to often they are in pathetically bad situations with no concern for accoustics.

I agree with Jond. The whole business of scale is often ignored in discussions about "absolute sound". I've never heard a system whose soundstage, depth, height, matches that of a real, live orchestra. Not fair? But that's how the question is put. I have not heard mega-buck systems, but I would venture to guess that nothing currently available can recreate the orchestra.

I am very happy with my system, but there is never an occasion where it sounds like someone is in the room playing a cello, piano, guitar, viola, or flute, all of which we have in our home.

I like my system better than most I have ever heard, but I do not delude myself into thinking it sounds like good live music.

I am more interested in reproducing music I like than fooling myself into thinking Ian Anderson is playing the flue, or Martin Barre is playing his guitar. Anyone who has that as a goal is bound to be disappointed most of the time.

The anwser is no, it does not sound like the real thing.
Even the best system I have heard cannnot reproduce the exact sound of a live performance, something very dissapointing after one spends about $100K on a 2 channel
system.

I once sat down to talk about this subject with a friend of mine who happens to be a very good piano player. He told
me that a piano, or a violin if you like, it's a very complicated instrument. The piano has quite a few chords to
produce certains octaves (frequencies), no speaker can match it sound. There is also the issue of sound dsitribution, is you place a piano player in the middle of a room you can hear the notes as you walk into a circle around it. Speakers(2 channel)will project the sound into a
angle of around 120 degrees, the ideal position between the speakers is just a small area. That is one big constrain that speaker designers have tried to overcome using such designs as "bipolar speakers". Dr. Omar Bose
was on the right track with the 901 design, too bad for the limited response of the full range drivers used.

Another issue is the wide dynamic range of a live performance. I go every week to this jazz place, it's amazing to hear how loud a trumped can sound (no amp assistance). I belive that the founder of Musical Fidelity
once said that you need over a thousand watts and pretty
decent efficiency from your speakers to achive the decibels
of a live performance.

To end my contribution I must say that at the present time
I will just enjoy my prsent system and allocate the money into getting all the cds I can buy rather than trying to
find audio nirvana.

Regards,

Hector Pedrosa

I have a concert violinist and a pianist for neighbors (they teach in the music department at the university in town). I get invited periodically to their homes to listen for pre concert recitals (I realize how lucky I am!). So, I hear "live" music in a home environment, in additon of course to concert venues. I have to tell you that my stereo system, as good as it is (Vandy Model 5's, McCormack DNA 225 Gold Revision, LP12/Ekos/Lingo/Dyna 20x, ARC Sp9 MkIII, Trivista SACD player) has NEVER come close to reproducing what I have heard in their homes. Both these musicians have been very impressed with my system, but they are more interested in listening to the performance rather than to the system or even the music, which they've heard umpteen times before. This points out the primary benefit of our often considerable investment in our hobby--we get to hear the greatest performances ever recorded reproduced in our own homes. Pretty amazing when you think about it really. The fact that those performances at the highest level of fidelity do not approximate a live performance does not diminish the joy of hearing that recording. My musician neighbors always enjoy our listening sessions in my home, but I imagine when they tell their spouses about it they say something like "Ashkenazy's left hand on the Rondo movement of Beethoveen's concerto #5 with Solti and the CSO was amazing" rather than "Bruce's speakers image beautifully." So, no my system doesn't come close to sounding like the "real thing", but I just listened to Lucia Popp sing Porgi, Amor from Mozart's Le nozze di Figaro and got chill bumps all over again, so I count myself fortunate instead of deprived.