Originally Posted by Titanium Dome
Most of the music we listen to is not based on live performance.
Having said that, I'll give you that a live recording (kind of an oxymoron, eh?) should sound like a live concert: everyone up front on stage in place. Except even then it doesn't recreate the complete stage experience.
When Bono's got a mic and he goes from center stage to stage left, then across to stage right, the sound doesn't necessarily do that in the recording, since one mic is the primary input for his voice, and an engineer might just leave it all at center stage.
Be that as it may, the majority of the music we listen to is recorded in a studio and mixed to its final presentation. Imagining that the recoding process is anything other than a nice fiction when it comes to soundstage and placement requires too much faith from me. That mix is the recording engineer's, producer's, and hopefully artist's interpretation of where the sound should be and how it should be reproduced.
I don't want to be too much of an old fart, but the only format that eliminates most of these variables is good old monophonic sound.
Saying or implying that two-channel sound is more natural or accurate or correct doesn't hold up under logical scrutiny. It's a preference and an engineering choice. Some of us may prefer it because that's what we're used to after 40 or so years of listening to it.
Peace to you.