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This philosophy fringes on extreme idealism I am afraid.

Soundmind:

Defining "this hobby" for a second, we are talking about PLAYBACK of recorded material. We buy the players, the wires, the speakers and provide the room. We have NO CONTROL over how the recording process is capturing the live performances.

First of all, not all recordings are live. If people ONLY listen to live recordings, that is THEIR preference but I highly doubt this represents the majority of music lovers and audiophiles.

Secondly, you seem to allude to the concept that "one's choices in stereo components" have the greatest bearing on whether or not a recording will sound 'perfectly' live or not. I think that this is completely false, although it is a very common misconception.

There are soom very good reasons why you don't hear what you hear at a live performance when you listen to a RECORDING of it at home:

a)you are listening through MICROPHONES
b)microphones are placed differently than the human ears
c)very often more than TWO microphones are used - so the recording is NOT A STEREOPHONIC CAPTURE OF A LIVE SOUNDSTAGE with respect to a specific listening position.
d)even if two mics were used, they were probably not 8" apart with a human nose in the middle - this will affect the perceived location of sounds, soundstage "width", etc.
e)your listening room has very different acoustics than the live venue. The reverberations in your listening environment are interacting with any reverberations and delays caught in the recording process.
f)In a live performance there are reflections from the venue hitting you from all sides. Microphone pickup patterns are also very different from the human head/ear combination.
g)even if your speakers are ruler flat in an anechoic environment, your room response will alter what is being reproduced.

There is no stereo in existance (nor will there ever BE) which can "fool" someone in a live versus canned music experiment because of this. Perhaps a pair of headphones with a digitally altered (convolved) waveform to simulate the acoustics of the venue - now THAT I could give a chance...

But a stereo system consisting of two loudspeakers? C'mon. You would need a digital correction filter for each recording that completely transforms your room into the acoustical equivalent of the live venue.

Even then, I'd bet I could tell I wasn't there EVERY TIME - blindfold or not.

Cheers,

Presto

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