How important is it for you to attain a holographic image?

  Holography is nice but not a must.  My system images very well and that's enough to keep me seated for hours at a time.  I have a garage system comprised of a set of Advents I refoamed and recapped powered by a Sansui SA-7500 integrated with a tablet running Spotify that will give me just as much enjoyment at times.  The Advents are hung from the rafters. 

I lot of stuff I enjoy, you know, 60s and 70s stuff, was recorded and mastered with headphones in mind, so it’s not a real holographic soundstage, anyway. It’s more of a fake holographic soundstage. Plus, I listen on headphones so it’s a win win.

I recall an article - It's all about thee music article in HIFIPLUS years ago and thought what a total load of crap - otherwise we'd all be listening to £20 Walkmans or MP2 players.

As you invest more in a system and its' connection to you, you prioritise and prefer certain things - some people are tone sensitive, some rhythm sensitive, some treble - others spatial awareness.

To that end I think to some imaging is everything. It's often the mark of a better system - rarely do very good/ well put together systems - lack in this respect.

I personally cannot understand thee obsession for high end headphones - they do not image - they can't - Ken Ishiwata explained this succinctly at the High End shows in Hammersmith about how the signal from each speaker arrives at a different time to our ears.

Anyway I digress - simply put good imaging is usually a direct correlation to the overall ability of your system, it's coherence, balance and ability

How interesting this thread should pop up now. I am waiting on a pair of Spatial Audio M3 Turbo S "Hologram" speakers to arrive any day now. The sound stage is supposed to be amazing. Can't wait!

It seems that the lower the noise floor, the better the 3-D imaging becomes. With proper room treatments and specific tweaks, that noise floor can be reduced way, way, way .... way beyond what we could ever have imagined.

Frank