Does Live Always Sound Better Than Your Home Theater System?

To answer this, I’d like to relate an experience we about a year and half ago. We are fans of the group Linkin Park. When the opportunity arose to see them live, we jumped. Got the best seats we could for sonic wonderfulness – dead center. There is nothing quite like experiencing live music: the excitement of witnessing your favorite musicians’ performance, seeing their facial expressions, hearing your favorite songs, the thrill of being caught up in the crowd’s energy. So we were pumped up for the concert. We’ve been enjoying a Linkin Park Live Concert Blu-ray, running the audio through our RSL 5.1 Theater System.  However, we experienced a big disappointment. Not the band itself. They put on a great show. But the sound system was a non starter. The band’s signature subtleties, keyboard themes, big drums and gritty guitar licks seemed to get lost in a jumble of distortion. There was no ability to distinguish each of the band’s components.  We were hearing a big wash and roar, but little differentiation.  Was it the quality of the PA system? Was the sound engineer overdriving the amps? Any way, we were disappointed.

 

To weigh in on the classic argument of the superiority of live versus recorded audio, after experiencing Linkin Park live and listening to them through my audio system, I would have to say that, I much preferred the RSL system. No contest. Why? We can hear not only a superbly defined sound field – front-to-back and overall sound stage and ambiance (you felt immersed in the concert), but surprisingly, I hear vertical imaging, which not common in a system within this price range. I can hear the sound of the instruments as they are being played, down to the small details like the impact of drum sticks on the drums. To sum it up, in this case the Linkin Park Blu-ray sounded much better than the live performance. When considering the cost of the tickets, transportation, and hotel (we had to travel to San Diego), it doesn’t take too many of these “live” performance to pay for an entire RSL 5.1 system. I’m just sayin’.