What would you say is THE MOST important factor to good imaging?

THE MOST important factor to good imaging?

The Preamp

There is only one , get everything right  . You can get a decent system  from the buy and try necessity for about 100 K .

@douglas_schroeder ....the Legacys' have all the means to accomplish 'what they do' with the room correction, the amt tweeters, and it's other details.....

I've accomplished basically the same for +/- 2% of their price.

The rest of the $ I'll apply to my speakers...;)

As is said: "Priceless."

...and I agree with Wolfie62....if it's not in the mastering, you can't fix it.

'Pig's ear>Silk Purse' still doesn't exist....

Yours Conceptually, J

The weakest link.
You can’t answer this absolutely without context. There are multiple conditions that are necessary without being individually sufficient. You have a series of elements aimed at producing a desired outcome. If any of them are inadequate the outcome will suffer. A perfect hardware chain from power to room acoustics would be useless with a mono recording. 

assuming excellent engineering of source material, any decent system, and decent speakers:

speaker placement in a room with not too close side and rear walls to avoid too early reflections, listening position close to equal distance triangle, adjust toe in direct for center only, or adjust toe in for a bit wider imaging for 2 focused listeners, (thus: method of moving/marking speaker locations tto change to either situation) and,

balance control, remote from listening position, to instantly fix darn good but not perfect engineering/balance for any individual track, live broadcast, whole 'collection' lps, cds ... with a gaggle of different tracks involving different engineering.