"What I find is that imaging of live music is level-dependent - it tends to be quite clear up to a certain amplitude, but can fall to pieces when the playing is louder than this threshold."
So I guess there is room for both of us to be "right", if that is important. One of my favored venues in DC is a place called Bohemian Caverns. In a way, it's a dump. However, it was constructed many decades ago such that the interior resembles a real cavern, with faux cave-like painted plaster surfaces. I would venture to guess that no two surfaces in the room are parallel to each other, nor are there any surfaces that are not complex curves. Thus by accident it is a great listening room, but only if you sit directly in front of the performers. One must avoid the direct radiations of their grade B speakers in favor of direct listening. At "the Caverns", the imaging can change during the course of a single tune from excellent in the audiophile sense to vague, and back to excellent.Anyway, in my original observation, I did not intend to be seen as rendering an absolute judgement about imaging in a live performance, which can mean anything from an unamplified recital in the home to an orchestra in a concert hall and in the latter case depends upon where one is sitting, what concert hall, etc. And everything in between.
