How to get the impact of a live concert?

Please outline the effective "simple test", as I am clearly both simple and testy.

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.

I noodle along on an electric guitar or bass using a tube amp with my PA driven drum tracks for hours everyday...so you could merely come to my house. Also, modern "constant directivity" PA horns in high quality systems are often pretty clear...nothing like the old stuff, and the "phased array" type wide and short stacked boxes have very short throw horns designed for wide dispersion, high sensitivity, and acoustic coupling with each other...like a gigantic hifi.

I'd personally feel a little weird sitting alone in a huge room in my McMansion with huge speakers driven by mega watt amps...listening to my fave little jazz trios? I'd have to get a smoking jacket or something...Bach cello suites blasting away...really? I'm seeing Sonny Landreth at a cool local venue this weekend...seen him before and he's amazing...but I don't want Sonny and his band in my hifi room. I like his recorded stuff plenty, but live is to be seen live, and I enjoy the difference.

Here's some reality...relatively "uncompressed" sound is one difference that the live stuff gives you...and NO home audio speaker I know of could handle even one live miked kick drum thump without exploding...none. Period...you need extreme "pro" drivers for that with huge voice coils and proper acoustic loading to get anything close to live uncompressed thump, and, frankly, I don't personally care to use that in my sweet little hifi rig. If you want live sound, hire musicians.

In the early 80s I stuck 300 watt 15" bass guitar speakers in my Altec A7s...either JBLs or Electro Voice ...now THAT handled the thump. The "phased array" stuff you hear in most large concerts are interesting designs...usually stacks of class D self powered boxes with a couple of beefy 10s and one or two horn drivers in each, along with high power subs with 15 or 18 inch drivers. Much more bang for buck compared to the older stuff, and about 10 times the power.

Music is only composed of harmonic content so yeah...but I don't think distortion necessarily increases perceived loudness. Example: I can play electric guitar cleanly or with various types and degrees of distortion (ss stompbox FET or Mosfet, or amp tube overdrive) and keep the loudness the same, and the level sounds the same...doesn't cut through a mix any more or less. Also, "loud and clean" can be perceived as louder since nothing is compressed...distorted tone will get lost in the mix easier. I might be wrong, but this is what I've experienced as a guitar player and live sound mixer for decades...If I'm mistaken please deduct 6 points from my score.

Wait...I don't have a sine wave generator, or a VU meter other than an SPL meter. Now I'm REALLY testy.

Dynamics are simply the perception of loud and soft relative to each other as perceived by the listener. The ear uses the relative difference between sounds to determine "loudness" and that has zero to do with harmonics.