[rollo]

  I believe we all can agree that our goal is to reproduce as closely as we can the live event. However there is one major problem with that. We were not at the recording session. We rely on the engineers expertise to do that. Some are good at it others not.
  We all have a recollection of real instruments playing in real space but that isnot enough. it is what WE percieve to be real that is the question. then some like certain halls for their acoustics. Say carnegie hall and the old Lincoln center. same performers different result. Love piano and violin at Carnergie run from Lincoln center. So its subjective as well.
  If you have a friend or relative who plays an instrument record them and then play it back on your system. You'll know right away. We did this quite a few years ago at our Audiosyndrome meeting recording guitar. The results were staggering, some actually liked the recorded sound better, go figure. So to each his or her own. Right? Wrong ?

  Without being prive to the recording as recorded makes all this talk moot IMO.


charles

[gerald porzio]

Guitar is among the easiest axes to record & duplicate w/ a good recording on good spkrs.

[hifiman5]

I just completed a week long intensive experiment with footers and chassis weights to achieve what to my ears is a balanced sound where bass is deep and tight but sounds "real"....where the mids and treble sounds most like real live music.  I did the work of matching the "right" interconnects to each piece of equipment first.  The footer/weight  piece was the fine tuning to enable the system to reproduce recordings that sound like what unamplified and amplified sounds like when I experience them. 

My personal preference would be described by some audiophiles as "warm" as the upper midrange and treble of many audiophile systems is a bit hot relative to live music IMHO.

This "tuning" is time consuming and, at times, frustrating.  Sitting here listening to "Beethoven's Last Night" the way it sounds after the tuning brings a big  to my face!!

[BobRex]

Guitar is among the easiest axes to record & duplicate w/ a good recording on good spkrs.

I wouldn't be so sure of that.  According to Brian Cheney: "I agree that of all the performers we recorded, the solo six string guitar suffered the most.  However, its overtones were extremely delicate and extended, almost ghostly. " 

[dflee]

I have acoustic guitars and a mandolin. While sitting behind these instruments it is a little off in the nuance department BUT sitting in with others playing, there are a lot of subtle sounds that takes a pretty good recording and playback to catch (especially on mandolin). As I have progressed my system, these nuances are showing up in spades.
I have been to many symphonies and found any with a fair amount of brass and in 440 to be (to my ears) bright. Since these concerts are not amplified I would have to say that they are natural. So when listening through my system I expect that same brightness in certain instruments. By the way, for that reason I love 420 or 415 pitch or the sound of French horns. When I hear instruments through a system and its all warm, I feel that it is not true to the recording and thus is missing that natural sound and inner detail.

Don