How to get the impact of a live concert?

Back in the 70's with the help of some friends, Jack Daniels, and most importantly a pair of Altec Voice of the Theater speakers, with Hendrix and the Doors, I truly believe we exceeded the impact of a live concert. Impact was not only heard but felt those speakers could literally bring down your home.

I owned a pair if Altec A7s for years...part of my PA all through the 70s (eventually bi-amped), and made cool (albeit large), sweet sounding (that middy horn and woody wood box) stereo speakers although somewhat colored sounding by today's standards. As a pro musician (and owner of a modern small but MUCH better than the "old days" PA system) and live sound tech I have to say this thread seems silly to me. Any good home system with full range speakers (I use a REL sub...love it) should be dynamic as hell or it's kind of pointless. Just turn the damn thing up if you need to. Gigantic live systems can sound better than ever, or worse if an idiot is mixing the show...and often are stupidly loud, which is lame.

You can get volume, you can get dynamics, you can get bass you can feel in your chest, but recorded music never sounds like live music. It's a simulation of live music. I am reminded of that at the most unlikely of times. Most recently, it was in the lower concourse at Grand Central Station. My wife and I were going downstairs to get something to eat on the train and over the din we heard some guitar music. It was a vendor promoting his self-produced CD and was playing thru a small amplifier, cranked up to be audible over the crowd. As I heard the first few notes, it was very, very clear that there was someone actually playing a guitar, a couple of hundred feet away, behind a pillar, in an acoustically very live, very noisy space. I think it's likely that you can get closest with rock & pop, which are usually highly processed, rely v. little on an instrument producing notes in real space (an electric guitar or piano doesn't sound like much w/o an amplifier and lots of processing does it?) & has a more limited dynamic range.

The impact of a live performance isn't necessarily measured in volume alone... Very high sensitive speakers and I should have added with alot of cone mass combined with a big quality dynamic amplifier will give move more air and give you dynamics that you typically just can't experience in your everyday system. Of course the speakers need to be well designed, but alot of cone area that is well designed with real sensitivity combined with big power, then you will give stunning realism even when not played at 120 db. It doesn't have to be loud to show the speed and dynamics of a system like this. Its not necessarily the screaming volume, but instead it the feel and impact that helps put you there.

07-11-12: Swampwalker
...recorded music never sounds like live music. It's a simulation of live music.

Swampwalker definitely hits the nail right on the head although most issues brought up here are quite valid. The process of getting live music onto recording and the capturing of sound through the microphone. Try imagining the big wall of sound converging to the head of the microphone before being converted to electrical signal and amplified/reproduced through loudspeakers. The sound that we get at the end of loudspeakers is a simulation of live music, in other words an illusion that the musicians performing in live shows or recording studios are brought into our rooms before us.

We can replicate or improve the illusion or feel of a live concert in our homes by proper setting up of the system and room treatments(apart from selection of loudspeakers) but we can only go so far with the equipment/technology that we have. I would look at dynamic speakers and the room if one wants to get a more live concert feel in the room.