Is imaging reality?

No, what we hear from a good recording on a good system in a well treated room presents as something I've never heard in a concert hall with respect to pinpoint imaging.  I'm not a professional musician, but while I lived in the midwest I attended 20-30 concerts a year in many different venues.  Full scale orchestral, Bach passions, recitals, and chamber music-- pretty much a full spectrum of classical.  Even with string quartets, sitting three to four rows back center hall, if I closed my eyes, I could usually not pull apart the 1st and 2nd violins unless I knew the work well enough to distinguish the parts.   I actually had this discussion with one of the cellists of the Indianapolis orchestra.  He advise me to loose my front row seats and go for 1st row balcony.  His point was that "symphony" implies that the parts are to be heard as a whole (soloists excepted).   My response was that I could stay home and hear that on my very good system.  I came to live performances to experience something I could not experience at home, that being watching him and his colleagues work feverishly to do justice to Herr Beethoven.  I also told him I dearly loved the complex tone of his instrument, which was utterly lost even a dozen rows back.   All of this is OK as far as I am concerned.  If all I listened to at home was large scale orchestral, I might not be too concerned about imaging, but I do listen to other non-classical stuff where the engineer and musicians intended a musicians in the room effect. 

@bkeske, I’ve never lived in Cleveland or the surrounding area. I lived in SW Ohio until I was about 40. Still an avid Ohio sports fan. Thanks for the info about Szell’s involvement in tuning the hall. Szell was a lot more than a great conductor.

bkeske, I agree with your comments on Severance Hall.   Not a bad seat in the house in my experience, and the most beautiful venue I've seen by no small margin.  It's been a while, but as I recall there is a fair distance between the front row and stage.  If I am remembering correctly, that could account for a more even distribution throughout the hall.  

I love Monet and Renoir.  I love to look through art books and those books serve a purpose.  But I remember my first visit to the Metropolitan Museum of Art and my first visit to the Chicago Art Institute.   Nothing in any art book could prepare one for what it is like to stand before the originals.  I've got a couple Chinese fine art knock offs of Degas paintings.  They are really pretty skillfully done.  Better than a print in an art book but they aren't originals and I know it. There is a parallel to reproduction of great music.

Listening at home is a different experience than listening to a live performance.  Who is to say that ultra high resolution and pinpoint imaging is "better" than what one hears live?   Is that really what Herr Beethoven had in mind?  

I dearly love Kempe's Strauss.  No one else comes close, in my opinion.  Would I rather stay home and listen to a bad 60's recording of Kempe or go to a mediocre performance at a regional orchestra?   I'll stay home and take my Kempe. 

I remember the first time I heard Janacek's Sinfonnieta live.  I sat right above the orchestra, to the side, where the brass was really in my face. The music is so dear to me and the sound of the brass was so beautiful that it just overwhelmed me.  I sat there fighting back tears.  I'm pretty sure that wasn't the composer's intention.  I've certainly heard better executed performances in recorded music.  But I am quite sure no recording on any system, no mater how good, will ever move me the way that live performance did.

So the live vs recorded works both ways.  Fortunately it's not an either/or choice.