In the 70s and 80s my friends and I were convinced that one of the qualifications to get a job on the mixing desk at concerts was to be deaf. Some dreadful sounds.
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Mixed for me. We generally love live music and even for genres that we don’t usually enjoy.
Just think they are both enjoyable but in different ways.
An indifferent audience or even individuals can take away enjoyment though. Particularly did not enjoy two middle aged guys plonking themselves in front of us and spending the next ten minutes in banal chat and constantly referring to how much better the act was in their earlier years. We moved.
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Yes really enjoyed Mr Bragg live just recently at small venue.
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My local Pink Floyd tribute band provides a complimentary experience to recorded PF. Not a patch on the original live PF on the occasions I saw them, but the tribute band brings the experience to life in a different way from recordings. In the best of venues sound can be very good indeed, though different from recordings because of the acoustics and ambience of the room. And being just a tribute band venues can be quite intimate which is nice. They’ve played a couple of times in churches which has worked very well.
Returning to the OP, opera is one place where it is not remotely possible for a hi-fi music system to reproduce the live performance, as the whole point is that as well as the emotion of music, and human voice singing meaningful lyrics there is the magic of live theatre. I have watched some live recordings of opera, including some from the Met, and on a big screen ( 12ft wide, 10-12 feet in front of me) and darkened room it has some resemblance of being there, until instead of showing the whole stage they zoom in on some piece of action or whoever is singing, which then becomes like a film and detracts from the performance, becoming unrealistic and preventing me looking at what I choose to.
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That is debatable!
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Me too.
power/volume seem to be the main criteria of many PA systems, nowadays.
In cinemas, concert halls, and so many venues the volume is ear-damagingly loud, and it makes it dangerous for a person who loves listening to music to risk their ears in these situations.
A delightful exception to this trend was when I recently went to see a tribute to the British guitarist Derek Bailey in Café Oto in London.
The atmosphere and the crowd were friendly and open and enthusiastic, the sound system was good, but not obtrusive, it was loud enough, and not too loud, much of the sound was just acoustic instruments, the event was compared by the amazing comedian Stewart Lee, and it was thoroughly enjoyable for me and my son, and everyone around us.
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Wow!
I am the exact opposite.
I almost always listen to Recordings of live concerts, and I love the sense of being in the room, at that particular gig, at that particular time, with those particular players.
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Yes, and that’s why I love watching YouTube videos of gigs, listening through my hi-fi.
I would say it depends , live concerts can be awesome at the right venue, or terrible. I saw AC/DC at two different places, Cobo Hall in Detroit, which is on the small side was really spectacular. Then years later I saw them at Skydome in Toronto from nose bleed seats, and it sucked…just too far away.
My old home theatre (7.2) surround was about the best I have ever heard Bluray live concerts.
Generally smaller venues are a better experience.
This disc cranked at home is amongst the very best.
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I have had that feeling from maybe a couple of live albums over the decades but the majority do not give me any sense of that. Most are sterile, edited, enhanced versions and like @BruceW they leave me absolutely cold.
I think it’s telling that on audiophile forums there’s a disproportionate number of white males who own live albums who genuinely believe that they’re getting some extraordinary document whereas out in the rest of the world they are generally amongst the poorest selling items in most artists catalogues.
Concert films are equally bad for exactly the reasons @Innocent_Bystander outlines above in relation to opera.
When I go to a gig the thing which brings it alive isn’t just music, lights, audience. It’s the ongoing interaction between players. Zoom in on one and you have destroyed the experience because it’s no longer what most people saw. I can honestly understand why some people with great live reputations are genuinely never understood to be that great by people who are shown their concert films. The 80s and 90s films of Springsteen live are a perfect example. The artist of that era was a million miles away from what we’ve had since, which is a pretty traditional and static band which people defend to the death but is a pale shadow of previous gigs, but to watch most of the films you’d think he was just a head and shoulders with some songs and nothing has changed.
I’ve a lovely personal example of this from the past two weeks when filming one of the bands my offspring is in.
Mum of the lead singer has been circulating band footage but the focus is always of their child. Enough there to capture anyone to be fair but the other week in Liverpool I caught all four of them from the side of the stage.
As the lead singer opens a love song with just their guitar you see the bass player swing round to my offspring on drums, offer them a hand which they clasp with two like a besotted lover and then, to the amusement of everyone there, they mime the opening verse to each other whilst making mock eyes at each other. Lead singer swings round to catch this and laughs. It’s a band having real fun. All you see in the Mum’s video is the lead singer turn their head and grin for a moment. You’ve no idea why.
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Thank you for sharing this
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A really good example of a poor concert video. The moment you zoom in on Joss and Jeff you’ve lost the gig. Might as well have just had the audio.
I think the thing with live music is not just the music but the atmosphere. The singing along, the lighting effects etc. Just-being there. We went to Runrigs retirement Last Dance concert along with 20,000 others . The emotion amongst everybody was real, not a dry eye anywhere including on stage. Knowing this was the end of a 40 year journey with them.
The album is very good but being there was amazing.
You don’t get the same feeling sat listening at home to a live album.
We once saw Ultravox live and the bass was like having chest compressions. If I had had that same bass at home pictures would fall off the walls etc
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The atmosphere is the key. I’ve been to some astonishingly good gigs, and some aspects were electrifying. I saw Marillion in 1984 when they first played Assassing live, and was in awe at the ferocity of the performance. But I’ve equally seen bands treat audiences with disdain, sound engineers who didn’t care, or know how to tweak to the acoustics of the venue and so on.
I’ve rarely heard a live album that I want to listen to at home, as the missed notes, poor mixing and whatever become apparent. The exceptions are usually ones where I was at the recorded performance, so it has that personal element. Who mentioned bootlegs? 
No-one mention The Last Waltz yet?
I know…it’s a movie, but a real uplifting one.
Better than the CD set cos you’re seeing the sheer joy of being together on the player’s faces…
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Really?Have you seen the entire Concert Blueray? One of the best I own.
No, zero interest for me but I watched the song you posted in full. It seems rather unlikely the rest of the film zoomed out to show full interactions. By all means show another clip proving my sweeping generalisation completely incorrect.
Obviously an entire gig zoomed out would be dull filmically but if you’re going to show head shots or one person rather than the band then don’t do so at the expense of interactions taking place elsewhere. Again, not all interactions are compelling or enlightening but, and this is especially true if you were at the gig, so many are missed by people editing these sorts of things.
Using Springsteen again as an example, I was at one of the gigs immortalised on DVD and there’s a certain song where it’s just his head, his shoulders, his guitar and some shots of the band in the background to… him.
If you were there you will know that there was an absolutely incredible moment of improvised joy between Weinberg, Federici and Tallent followed by some very funny horseplay between them and Patti Scialfa where Clarence is defending her honour against all comers. Didn’t happen on any other night of that tour. There was also one of Nils all time great improvised guitar solos. The camera showed us… head, shoulders and guitar of Bruce.
I saw AC/DC in a small venue before they became famous, and I could tell they were destined for greater things.
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I saw Rush for £3 in in 1980. Going to cost around £4k this time around with travel etc.
Four thousand!?! 