Sound-stage, imaging, focus......

I don't feel that these descriptive terms are limited only to audio, and feel that what your are hearing at the actual event is more diffuse, because you are further away, further back into the reverberent field than microphones usually are when most recordings are made. Look, if you're really as curious about this as you think you are, you should buy a portable recorder like a DAT, and a one point condensor microphone. You could then ask if you could make your own recording the next time you go to a performance. That way, you could listen to it later on your system, and see what differences there are. You'll never really know until you do this.

Back in college in an astronomy class, we had this portable mini-planetarium demonstration. It was a half sphere "tent" about 15 feet diameter, kept smoothly inflated with air. All of us students sat around the circular edge, where the dome met the floor. In that tiny domed space, I could hear the girls all around me whispering all sorts of interesting things, and wasn't thinking about astronomy very much, heh heh. The interesting thing was, I couldn't tell what direction their voices were coming from! Were they beside me? Across from me? I didn't know. Sometimes it seemed to come from all around me at once, and sometimes it sounded like she/they were speaking from inside my own head! IT WAS THE WEIRDEST (and most fun) non-audio sonic experience of my life...and I'm sorry all of you good old boys missed it...well, not really.

Dkarmaeli, I resent your implication that audiophiles don't love music too. We do, it's just they we enjoy BOTH aspects in a recording, where "music lovers" don't really care what they're actually hearing their music on...could even be a boombox.