Is Sound Stage an artifact of recording?

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.

Wall Of Sound Live, did you ever go to a Grateful Dead Show?

What did they call their tower of speakers? I once saw the amount of McIntosh Amps they needed for that.

I once saw the Stones, big stadium, I think Shea, anyway, walking in, huge towers of speakers, OH BOY, holy crap, we get in.

Living Color Opens. They sound like crap fried with .... 

I realized, they were not letting them use the full sound system.

The Stones hit it, you could feel the entire place shake, not as 'Full' as Grateful Dead, but More Powerful, I think the most powerful I ever experienced (Steel Wheels).

You gotta hear the Kinks at the Beacon. During Lola, every drunken guy gets up, shakes in unison, you can see the balcony above you moving, and there's another one above them moving.

If sober, you start to think about the collapse of that bridge at the Hallmark Building.

@ronboco This applies to only those who enjoy the symphony and other live acoustic events. I never grew up with that so I could care less.

Neither did I. The best music player I was exposed to as a kid was the car radio. You can grow into these things. Learning more about music and trying to play it helps. The big jump for me came in my adult years when I began to find the ever changing lines of jazz more appealing than the ABAB structure of most pop and rock. Stay open and enjoy your journey.