Live or Recorded; A Faustian response

I'm with Greg and Albert for the same reasons.

I am not sure. Muddy Waters live at the Main Point in 1970....Rolling Stones live at the Spectrum 1969....
Mahler's 7th Tonhalle Zurich Zinman conducting last Sept 18th.....my next door neighbor's daughter practicing Brahm's cello sonata. They are all packed with an emotional content
beyond recorded music. It is a moment in time that will never happen again. Maybe its the interaction between
audience and performer, a social aspect that recorded music
does not have. LIVE is life, existential being (Heidegger).
Listening to recorded music is a passive response.

Just my opinion!!!

Shubertmaniac, interesting that you call responding to recorded music more passive than reacting to a live event. Obviously we are all different. I personally get drawn into the music here or there, especially if my system gets the gestalt of the piece more or less musically right. That is indeed a live, a vital experience, not a surrogate for something, because the system functions as a musical instrument, if you will. Furthermore, at home I enjoy the absence of coughing, of tweaking chairs, of untimely whisperings or the distraction, the perfume of a young woman sitting in the next row in front may cause me. So what you call the social aspect, can in fact be detrimental to the musical experience. On the other hand, the whole audience in a hall enthralled by an extraordinary performance, be it Zinmann in the Tonhalle or the Alban Berg Quartett at the Zurich Opera is an experience, even the best of systems cannot simulate. All the same however, being touched by music per se, no matter what its source, can in my opinion never be a passive affair. Music, no matter its source, even a car radio will do sometimes, will elicit all sorts of emotional responses, which can lead you into an active,conscious and reflective dialog with what is happening on a myriad of planes .

Imagine how much money you will need to spend to listen to the live music like you're listening to your rig???????

Another great post, we seem to be getting a few of them recently! Having just performed the Lord Nelson Mass in our choir's spring concert, I must say that nothing will quite drain me emotionally as much as a live concert, both as a performer and as a member of the audience. I do appreciate the ability to have the greatest artists in my listening room at a moment's notice, and I am moved emotionally by it, but never quite to the extent as at a live musical event. There's an electricity, an edge, that you just don't get from a recording, especially a studio recording (probably why I like recordings from concert performances), and on big pieces, where real life impact and power are involved (I have never heard a recording capture the visceral power of the bass drum at the end of the Shostakovich 5th or the beauty and majesty of final portion of the Mahler 2nd) there is no contest, no matter how good your system.