Of course, a high school auditorium or worse a gymnasium is about as bad a venue as you can get. The reflections and reverberations are substantially stronger than the direct sound, so imaging is next to impossible. Same thing to a lesser degree in a good concert hall. In those expensive "orchestra" seats, most of the direct sound goes over your head and all you hear is reflections. The best seats in the house are usually the first row of the balcony, where you do get direct sound. But still, the best you get for imaging is violins on the left, 'cellos/basses on the right and everything else in the middle. You will not be able to pick where the oboe or bassoon is. Then there are those orchestras that put the second violins on the right and move the 'cellos to the center. Now there is NO imaging.

Alas, imaging is engineered into recordings. A good 2-mic recording does wonders for the presentation of a performance and I prefer them when available, which is not often. Audiophiles demand pin-point imaging which is just not there in a live performance. So the engineer takes a multi-mic multi-track recording and creates imaging. Presto, an audiophile recording.

Slam is missing in your high school concert for the same reasons. Slam is not in the bass, it is in the mid-bass, low treble. The slam is getting smeared by all of the reflections and all you get is boooooooooom.

Bob

I have to say every thing you say is true. Even in, what I think are the best seats in the house you do not get the pinpoint imaging that you get on a record. Maybe if you got to stand were the conductor does, Man that must be cool…

What you do get is a very real sense of a lot of folks playing really together just out there…

Different conductors move sections around to suit themselves. It does not make as much of a impact as to image as you would think. One Guy ( I like music I don’t know who’s who) put the basses to the left and split and mixed the rest of the strings, to both front, left and right. That was pretty cool. There was defiant head turning there but if you heard it on a record, it would just be confusing. Looked kind of hard to conduct as well.

What is not missing is slam.

When the better part of 100 guys that know there stuff really get going. that’s slam. When the guy in the back hits the really big drum or the organist steps on the low pedal not only do you feel it in your chest, it can take your breath away…John