3D lifelike sound and impeccable measurements - mutually exclusive???

@clarinetmonster2... ASR is basically all about measurements. That is their thing. I am soon going to be testing based on sound, some of their best measuring amps ever. We will see, 

If it sounds amazing, then why would you care how it measures? And if it sounds awful, but measures well, that only makes you distrust your ears. I’ve heard or read numerous interviews with respected designers that may start with measurements initially, but use listening to do the final evaluation and refinement.

Measurements do not indicate how something will sound in a real world situation, room, associated electronics. There are far too many variables. Just buy what sounds good to you and be happy. No one on here will be listening to it, only you.

It seems to me that a good soundstage is largely determined by loudspeakers, speaker positioning, and room acoustics. Less so by electronics (unless we're talking about digital signal processing, maybe.) I'm not aware of any metrics that directly indicate soundstage size or holographic image quality. 

So IMO the short answer to the OP's question is "no", 3D lifelike sound and impeccable measurements are not mutually exclusive. But that is mainly because the measurements that are usually available seem to have little or no bearing on soundstage/imaging.  Does a higher SNR ratio and "blacker background" have some positive impact on the soundstage/imaging?  Probably.  I don't know how it would make things worse, everything else being equal (which rarely is the case).

Geof3 I’ll be really interested to hear your findings, are you going to post them?