Speaker Characteristics and Why?

[Feanor]

Feanor, it is the artist, their performance and talent that one should want to hear not some engineer's jacked up recording of that. I can't believe you all are telling me a recording of the original performance is better than the real thing. Most recordings aren't even made with all the musicians in the studio at one time any more. You are telling me that a recording of a guitar or sax sounds better than hearing that guitar or sax played in real life. If that's the way you all think and feel discussion over because you have all lost your way.

Well no -- or rather maybe. Because how good the live performance sounds depends on our seat in the house, (amongst other things). What the engineers capture depends on the placement of their microphones which might be much better than our seats, (and of course on their mix-down skills, etc.).

In any case I've often heard better sound sitting in my living room than I have at a live performance. That is, given a good recording and my half-decent system, I have often preferred the sound at home to a lousy seat in a lousy hall.