Imo the only way to be a fully convincing experience with large-scale recordings is via multichannel or binaural.
That's certainly an understandable take.
Still, while I do have a surround sound set up, I am still finding my 2 channel can produce the more convincing illusion. Part of that is definitely that my surround system isn't the latest/greatest. It's an old Denon AV reciever with various surround processing, or discrete surround, and I haven't implemented Dolby atmos, nor am I listening to discretely recorded surround music recordings (with the exception of movie scores in films).
But that said, I'm not finding I need those extra recorded, or processed, reflections added by other channels, for believability. I can play with the acoustics in my room, moving around curtains etc, so that I can get just the right mix where the sound has some airy liveness (room sound) but without my small room sound signature dominating the recording. In other words, the effect is actually listening to a wide open, large space for symphonies, hearing horn sections etc "through a big space." That's why it's been so easy to "believe" to a degree.
When I listen to opera on my desktop setup, for instance, it almost sounds like I'm listening to an acoustic 'diorama'. The sources sound tangibly real, just tiny, as if you could compress a full orchestra and cavalcade of singers into the space of a desk.
Yes I've certainly experienced just that "miniaturized orchestra" phenomenon! In fact, bear with me for an audiophile moment: When I was reviewing a pair of Waveform Mach Solo speakers (wide, even dispersion design from a egg-like mid/tweet enclosure) I used them with a Bryston amp as recommended by the manufacturer (he was against tube amps). They produced an astonishing clarity and "liveness" of sound with the exception that, especially with symphonic music, I was getting the impression of the "symphony brought in to my small room" vs a window looking at a big symphony. So it gave the impression of miniaturized symphonies appearing around and behind the speakers.
At one point I tried a tube amp I had...not the most accurate thing around I think...and it practically "solved" that issue. It's like the imagine just broke free of my room, and symphonic music now gave the impression of "hearing something big over a long distance" rather than "something small over a small distance." Now, presuming for argument the tube amp altered the sound at all, if it even just screwed a bit with the tonality it may have produced, say, a small dip in just the right high frequency area to reduce the slight "dryness" and forwardness of the sound. And even a teeny objective effect like this could have a large subjective effect, of turning that little switch where the mind perceives distance differently.
Very similar to how a very slight movement of my curtains can alter this effect in my room.
I don't really know of course, just speculating, but I found it truly intriguing. (And the speaker manufacturer, upon hearing that tube amp paired with his speakers, had his anti-tube-amp bias shaken quite a bit by the experience).
Conversely, I've also had times where I've noticed my HiFi listening color my impressions of live music too! For example, I've often noticed that in an orchestral setting, sources are not as 'pinpoint' sharp as they might be in my own listening at home. I know it doesn't fully make sense to apply a term like 'imaging' to a live orchestra, but I do genuinely think that, at least in some seats of the hall, it's harder to position and pick apart instruments than it might be in my own bedroom lol.
I always find other people's impressions about live orchestras interesting. Many feel there isn't "imaging" per se as we experience with hi-fi.
Yet my experience was that I very much perceived imaging, similar to how I hear it with good orchestral recordings. But part of that depends on where I'd sit, and I tend to favor vivid instrumental timbres and scale, so I tended to sit close to orchestras when I could (often closing my eyes).
Which is another reason I actually enjoy closely-mic'd orchestra recordings that, to others sound "wrong" and not "realistic like you hear in the hall."