A live show sounds worse than the recording and feels a hundred times better. That’s the whole point of being there.

Recordings are technically better and they are not the same event. The mix is cleaner at home, the vocals are in tune, and none of that touches what happens in a room where hundreds of people experience something in the same second. Presence is what you went for, not audio quality. That is why you remember the show and not the file.

Next time you are somewhere live, resist watching it through a screen. Take the worse sound and the obstructed view and actually be there. Apply the same rule to anything that only happens once, which is most things.