Is soundstaging emblematic of reality?

For me, great soundstaging is the magic of hi-fi. Here’s the deal: Recorded music, as hard as it tries, simply doesn’t sound the same as live music. I don’t think I’ve ever heard a recording that fooled me into thinking it was live music (and I just returned from RMAF, where I heard some of the best system on earth).

There is one area, however, where recorded music does something that live music cannot typically do – create a magical sound stage. That is where recordings surpass live music. There is something so engaging and – I’ll use the word again – magical about listening to a well-engineered recording that fills the listening space with vocals and instruments that are positioned throughout the space – center, sides, high, low, and everywhere in between. It creates that uniquely hi-fi experience that keeps us coming back for more and more. Don’t hold back. Embrace the fun. Yes! It is an essential component of hi-fi enjoyment!

+1 wester17,

I totally agree that recorded and live music are two different entities.
And yes, the audio experience can be more even enjoyable sonically than the live experience under some circumstances (but, to me,not all.)
The point is, some would have you believe that soundstaging is the EQUIVALENT of live.  Not so!

" I don’t think I’ve ever heard a recording that fooled me into thinking it was live music."

Once I was at an audio show. It was early in the morning, several of us who were associated with the room were there, and present was a musician (who gigs on acoustic guitar, vocals, electric piano, and drums). The musician had not heard the system before, and his back was towards it when somebody turned it on and started playing The King’s Singers’ a capella cover of Simon & Garfunkle’s "The Boxer". For the second or two between the start of the song and when he whirled around, wondering when whoever was singing had snuck into the room, the musician THOUGHT he was hearing live music. He told me there was a brief but disconcerting instant of this-does-not-compute when he saw no one at the far end of the room yet was hearing what he had assumed to be live music.

So it was over in a second or two, but at least it happened that one time.

Duke

I use an ambient loop system in the rear, with its own amp. I want the music to sound like it's happening right in front of me, right smack in the middle of my living room, not something happening between my front speakers with maybe a tad bit of depth.