'Holographic Sound Stage?'

The sound Jmbatkh is unnatural in the real world. I've been to hundreds of live shows and the degree of depth and separation he describes just doesn't occur in live music. The brain doesn't process live music in such a way, because the sound waves are hitting the ears at roughly the same time. Holographic sound such as Jmbatkh is largely the result of sound processing, speaker design and room effects.

@ Luvs2listen, your 5.3.13 post hit the nail on the head. It is not a trick. It happens when things are setup correctly. Tara Labs Air 1 cable helped my system to achieve holographic presentation of the music with good recordings. I think that the room does play a big role in this also because now I don't want to leave it!!! LOL!.

Over the last 2 years I’ve added an Audience aR 6TS conditioner, upgraded my Theta Casablanca II to a III, and added Clear Day speaker cables and for the first time my 50 year chase I now have a holographic system. Nothing was auditioned or compared side by side with competing brands so whatever I did was along the way was dumb luck.

I read the OP's question more narrowly. Luna asks whether the imaging and staging that a quality hi-fi can produce are ever encountered at live performances. My answer is somewhere between "never" and "almost never". Nonetheless, I find that excellent staging and imaging is critical to creating the illusion of live performance in a home setting. You lose a lot at home vs a live performance, but this is one area where the reproduction feels more real than the real thing. If you're a purist and a rationalist, you may reject the idea on principle. If you want to maximize your enjoyment of recorded music at home, I say "embrace it".

Just MHO.

Marty

To Dawgbyte, what type of shows have you attended that don't allow you to put the sound with the artist? I'll give you that most "electric" live shows don't have such queues since everything is amped up and pumped out via some massive speaker system.

But when the recording is of a small quartet, for example a bass, drum, piano and vocalist, positioned on a stage, and a couple of microphones are set up fairly nearby, the arrangement of artists will come through the recording due to the slightly different arrival times of sound at the mic diaphragms. If you were standing near the center of the performance with the mics, you'd be able to close your eyes and place the drummer, bass player, piano and singer.

The studio created effects use the two channels and phase delay to make our brains think a sound is coming from specific locations. If you can close your eyes an easily assign locations to certain sounds, then your system has produced the illusion very well, especially if the sounds you're pointing to have no relation to the speakers.