I agree with carl. You didn't percieve localization of instuments because it was diffused. Many music halls are made to amplify the sound. so you get diffusing at the same time since there is a lot of echoing going on. But even then your telling me that if say a flute solo came on that you could not pinpoint the exact location of that instument? Or pinpoint where an opera singers voice is? Very often borders book store has musicians and bands play in there store. I can get as close as 5 feet away from them. Even at 20 feet I can clearly tell where each member, voice, and instuments sound is coming from. I can even tell where each guitar string is. Our whole life relies on what we could call imaging and soundstage. When someone is talking to us we know exacly where they are in the room just from their voice alone. If we here a bird but don't see it we know it's in the tree by localizing it's chirping. When a phone rings we can pinpoint exactly where it is from the sound alone. And not just left or right but we also have depth perception. I could go on and on but back to music. It sounds like your listening to a large ansembles. They are meant to combine a large amount of instuments to sound as one. If 10 cellos are playing at once of course you won't here each individual cello and be able to place where the sound of each one is coming from. They are blending like one instument. Even then you should be able to tell that they are coming either from the left side of the stage or right side or middle and how far away they are from you. The whole reason we have two ears is to persieve sounds in stereo so to speak. That is why we have what science calls stereo hearing. It is so we can place sounds relative to where we are located to tell us where they are coming from in the 3 dimentional world we live in. If a stereo system is going to reproduce sound (not just music)and it's emotion Then it must get the soundstage and imaging right. Also bands and conductors go through a lot of trouble to set up the insruments in just the right spot to give the sound they want and so other instuments can be empasized or so others don't get drowned out. This gives you the full emotion they are trying to convey. Even if the timbre is correct if your stereo isn't showing you how the conducter set up his orcastra then it isn't correctly reproducing the sound or emotion that he intended.
Sound-stage, imaging, focus......
I would like to get some facts and opinions about sound-stage, imaging and focus as presented by a system. When I began my system purchasing process, I listened for a sound which came close to a live acoustical performance. For me, that meant instruments sounded real. I was not listening for sound-staging, imaging, etc., because, try as I might, I have not been able to comprehend sound-staging, exact placement of instruments (re: two chairs to the left of the pricipal trumpet), micro-dynamics, etc. at a live performance. That just doesn't happen for me from any position in an auditorium or club. I have never commented after a concert that "the focus and depth were spectacular". Are these descriptions applicable only to reproduced sound or am I missing something?