Is soundstage DEPTH a myth?

"Hypoman" made a comment about "eye candy" often being placed between loudspeakers and how distracting it can be.  I once owned a gorgeous pair of B&W 801 speakers finished in Rosewood and sold them to buy the exact same speaker in black because the beauty of the rosewood was so distracting. It may sound crazy, but I swear I was able to listen more deeply without that "eye candy" present.

Comments about recording engineers remind me of the old joke about medical doctors :  "What do they call the doctor who graduates last in his class in medical school"? ------------ Answer: "Doctor".   I believe the same applies to graduates of recording engineer schools !   Just because you have a degree doesn't mean you are good at what you do.  My favorite recording engineer is George Massenburg.

Comments about "ordinary" audio systems and using your brain to compensate for the system's shortcomings remind me of the dozens of fine musicians I know whose audio systems are positively horrendous !   They simply say that they can fill in whatever information is missing by "hearing" it the way that they want to hear it !  A great audio system is really just "the icing on the cake" to them.  Really !

Wow, omg, so much being written hear about the subject.

Soundstage is like pornography, when you hear it you just know.

And something not discussed too often, Quality recording is quite important especially on a better more revealing system. Lower level systems are tough to distinguish better recordings on. I know this because I have three systems in my home and each room is different.

It's not a myth, it's an illusion. Intentionally. 

There are some who believe that even with the very best of recordings, the best loudspeakers with the quietest cabinets, the best rooms acoustically speaking, 2 channel audio is at best only able to give limited amount of realism/soundstage depth.

Some, like the physicist/audiophile Dr Edgar Choueri, argue that spatial audio could be the best way forward when it comes to sonically reproduced realism.

After hearing him speak on the Audioholics YouTube channel, I'm tending to agree with him.

Absolutely. But, like in the real world it's defined by the environment around the source and the volume (relative to other sounds) of the source. So, those are the parameters that must be in the original recording or at least engineered to sound that way.