Is Sound Stage an artifact of recording?

"We are increasingly likely to find ourselves in places with background music. No composers have thought to write for these modern spaces, which represent 30% of our musical experience."

Brian Eno

@bruce19 

"You could not pinpoint the location of the violin as you might expect you could on a good recording of the same work!"

The key is live, acoustic, no mics: non-recorded; non-amplified.

They could have left it unamplified, but recorded it with mics hither and thither. Attending the acoustic performance, it would sound to you as it did: but the recording of that performance could definitely have excellent imaging, depth .... soundstage,

depending on IF ’they knew what they were doing’.

And, depending on IF your system/space can present it well.

Well, now we are getting into a more nuanced discussion.  The "wall of sound" developed by Phil Spector was never "realistic."  Certainly an 8' wide left to right recording of the piano keys is something you'd never experience in real life. 

I also take exception to the idea that all of us want a live recreation of music all the time.  Most of the time I DO NOT.  Live dynamic range reproduction of The Cult is just not what I need most of the time. 

One last thing, and this will make some of you apoplectic... the most objectively neutral speakers tend to suffer in terms of perceived imaging, though they tend to reproduce live jazz/orchestral imaging more ACCURATELY. 

BTW, I take no position on what you should strive for or like.  Your money, your sacrifice, get a system that you like to enjoy, but there are a lot of times when the claim is that a listener is striving for ultimate realism... and they aren't.  

My friend was having a party. He is familiar with my system. His friend is a HUGE Billy Joel fan. 

Over they come, let’s put on An Innocent Man album.

His friend never wanted to leave, he said he had gone to ___ many live concerts, great seats, NEVER had it sounded so good!

Part of the Party moved over here, we had a grand old time.

That was my Onkyo Dx-7500 CD Player, Dual Matched Burr Brown Processors

"The Onkyo Integra DX-7500 is a high-end vintage Compact Disc player released in 1988, originally priced at $700.  It is renowned for its true linear 18-bit digital-to-analog (D/A) conversion technology, which Onkyo claimed provided superior amplitude resolution and lower distortion compared to standard 16-bit players of the era."

I love the sound of my current Sony xa5400es SACD player (painfully slow startup), but I will always miss that Onkyo. Damn drawer kept giving me trouble, fixed it half a dozen times, got fed up, gave it to someone: out damn spot!

If you can't handle distortion, then you can't handle life.