Does Your System Sound Like the Real Thing?

The real thing? With eyes closed, I can tell in a jiff between the real thing, and my humble $25K system. I can also, in a jiff with eyes closed, tell the real thing from live with a $250k system. We've come a long way in stereo, but live is not even close---To these tympanics, at any rate....I'm talking acoustic instruments, properly miked vocals too. Electric instruments, synthesizers and the like? That's very close!

on smaller scale recordings (allison krauss, vivaldi chamber
stuff, piano, mozart clarinet quintet, etc.) my system sounds
great and extremely satisfying. on beethoven #5 or stravinsky's firebird, it sounds like a stereo. large choral works sound largely strident. i heard the wilson wamms Wonce
and they came startlingly close to sounding like a symphony orchestra (shostakovich #4/ashekenazy). if you have gobs of
money to build a room and customize a system, you might be able to acheive "95%" of reality. otherwise, imho, stick
to good recordings of chamber music and/or attend more concerts.

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.