Looking for the next level in imaging...

I have listened to omni speakers and they do produce sound that fills the room but lack pinpoint imaging. 

The answer does not simply depend on speakers alone. A nice 300B amplifier with speakers to match should do the trick. 

Remember in the movie, Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield pays Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to write an essay for him about one of his own books.  Rodney‘s character gets an F on the paper with the comment, “I know you didn‘t write this paper but whoever did knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut Jr.“. There is some truth to that.  We interpret things in ways an artist or designer never imagined.

Perhaps musicians listen about as well as we would performing.

I prefer stereo sound without tone controls or spatial processing.  It‘s taken me years to accept listening to music reconstituted back from binary code.

"Every recording  has a correct volume, a volume at which it sounds best. This is because our ear's frequency response changes with volume."

The "volume control" is to be used like the "focus" knob on a microscope or telescope.

is it possible to break down or quantify the importance of the different components and room design and tuning?

For example—and I am just throwing out numbers as examples—would it be 30% room design, acoustics and tuning (to get a holographic image); 40% speakers; and 30% front end? Is it possible to break it down? And to refine it even more, like ratios of importance for the front end (ie, amp, preamp, DAC, source)? If percentages are unrealistic, maybe a ranked priority order would work?

@patrickdowns

back in 2017 i responded to a thread question; "What is the most important part of a system" .......which does somewhat answer your question. i don’t feel you can assign percentages, since the process is dynamic and builds on itself.....and there are too many starting points and variations and matters of preference.

but i still see things this way generally. i’m only linking this since i don’t want to derail the nice thread away from the "imaging" focus.

https://forum.audiogon.com/posts/1399899

as far as room tuning and how it relates to imaging; i’ve posted links to how i did my personal process back in 2015 before. it starts with having a personal reference sound. sometimes that is the issue; we all don’t possess a locked in reference to chase to guide us. sometimes we delegate our system character to a dealer, or friend and follow their advice. it’s s perfectly valid way to go and honest. but better is when you do have the light go on and you know where you are going and so can attack it yourself. then; if you are lucky enough to have a dedicated space where you have the flexibility to be able to do what you want; then it’s doable.

here are those room tuning links to what i did back in 2015. lots of details. and note that i had been in my purpose built dedicated room for 11 years in 2015, so i had crashed and burned a number of times and underwent a baptism of fire to get to the point of my final 9 month long dash to success.

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/almost-free-and-4-inches-the-final-1.17389/

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/almost-free-and-4-inches-the-final-1.17389/page-3#post-314941

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/suck-out-fixed-i-think.18116/

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/suck-out-fixed-i-think.18116/page-2#post-329496

IME, the best sound image system was with Quad 57 with a dinky real old tube power amp in 1990. The sound images floated like a ghost between speakers. The flocking of guitar images were like audio notes dancing on the air. I could see and feel lips of a female singer. My audio-quest started that day. I had a music system (Inkel Concerto) on 1979 and few other systems until 1990.

I had below system in Black.

The best sound images I made was with Avalon Eclipse, Jadis Defy-7, ML-26 around 1997. I played with Avalon speaker sounds which had many options such as tweeter covers and sound damper pad.

I think the sound image is the most important part in hi-end audio. It is an art and very special. I will recreate those ghost images later if possible.

No. I change my mind. I don’t think so. I won’t play with those ghost images again. Why? It is not that special now. I have a natural sound system now. The ghost sound images are dry and tasteless sound images to compare the original natural sound system I have. I don’t think I’ll like those embossed (outlined) ghost like sound images from a conventional system now. And I must endure with the sound coloration, glare and veil from those systems. I won’t waste my time for ghost images from un-natural sound.

Also, I don’t think my ears will be happy with those harsh sounds. The ghost sound images are the combination of harsh sound of certain freq and reflection sounds (from walls and ceiling) of speaker distortion sounds.

I know many of you don’t hear my video sound correctly because your ears are tuned for your audio system which is un-natural sound which you’ve been hearing for life from your audio, your car, church, Disneyland, etc. To those ears, the original music sound much different from what I hear. Many of you earned seasoned ears through decades. So, you remember it took weeks to months to open your ears for a special gear. It is not easy to hear the original music and my videos correctly for those biased ears. The original music is a natural sound and it won’t take long time to earn open ears for seasoned ears but it’ll still take some time with concentration (search and try to hear the singer’s mouth and voice images in the sound-stage).

The original song is recorded directly from a singer’s mouth to Mic (1-2 foot distance?) in a treated room. So, live-recording video must sound the original music plus the room. So, there is an sound difference between the orig music and my live-recording video. Alex/WTA