Right. I remember walking into The Record Collector in Hollywood about thirty years ago (at its old location) and after talking with the owner about a few records, mentioned that his speaker position- one located in one room, another past an arch in another area- wasn’t so good for imaging. Hey said "bah, stereo-- a gimmick."
This was in the days when mono records sold for almost nothing. I should have bought more.
To stereo-- listen to those old jazz records from the dawn of the stereo era- no center image- hard panning left and right with a hole in the middle.
When I have visitors who have never heard higher fidelity stereo, they usually remark on the sound coming out of the middle--the phantom image. Is it a parlor trick? Sure. Does it contribute to a greater sense of realism? Maybe.
I was very much about imaging in the ’70s- when I started listening to the original Quad- a speaker with vast limitations, but mostly suffering from sins of omission. The image was almost everything! It could be spooky in its sense of realism on the right recording, along with that coherency that comes from electrostatic panels (sans the add-on woofers and tweeters, which I would use to make up for some of the shortcomings of the Quad).
For the past dozen years, I’ve been listening to horns- and image they do well, with SET amps, no crossover on the mid-horn and judicious placement.
But, imaging is only one factor in trying to create the illusion of real music. Tone is very important to me, as is timing in the attack and decay of the fundamental and harmonics. All are cues that trick our brains into believing more.
Is it ultimately an illusion? Of course!
Is there something better? Probably. Weren’t there three channel experiments back in the day?
I used to add a delay line and a small set of nothing special speakers -ala the old Hafler method- it worked better on some records than on others- to add a 3d dimension to the proceedings. (I don’t really bother with discrete multichannel sound, though I guess I could on my home theatre system).
Ralph Glagal also developed a fairly elaborate playback method that, I believe, used conventional recordings but was able to present the information in a way that was supposed to better recreate the live music experience. (He lived not far from me in NY and I should have visited when I still lived there).
I doubt we need more formats at this point- getting consensus among CE, the rights owners of content and ultimately, consumer buy-in makes for big scale investments at high risk. (Look at all the failed formats over the years and the huge controversy over more recent approaches, like MQA).
I’m also not interested in re-buying material, much of which is out of print, and in many cases, has never been reissued, at least legitimately.
I’ve come to the conclusion, after spending many years, a lot of time, and a considerable amount of money and effort ---that not everything will sound great- if some of it does, wha-hoo! I’ve focused more on getting the most out of average recordings, not "special" ones- and accept the fact that it is a poor substitute for the real thing.
I will say that after attending Crimson’s show here almost two years ago, I played some of the sides from the Live in Toronto 2016 set the next morning and was very impressed with how well my system and this recording acquitted themselves. I could not, of course, reproduce the size of a 3,000 seat hall, or the power of the bass (their sound team was amazing-- they never overloaded the room, which is common in most amplified music shows).
I have musicians visit occasionally, and we can get a decent approximation of an acoustic guitar over the system. Piano is much more difficult to reproduce convincingly and much has to do with the recordings in my estimation.
Where things start to get challenging is when the the material gets complex (big orchestral passages with lots going on) and starts to sound cluttered-- I don’t think it is simply an issue of dynamics, but may have to do with the ability of the phono cartridge through the electronics through the speakers to unravel all that is going on and present it in a convincing way.
I also don’t listen at terribly loud volumes- I like to try and get the energy, bass and dimension at less walloping SPLs.
Short answer, to me, is imaging is a factor and perhaps not even a necessary one to create the illusion of live music, recognizing that no reproduction is quite the same as the real thing; this is so, for me, even when the reproducing system, recording, room, set up and all the other factors, including mood or frame of mind, are most conducive.
