My audiophile take on the symphony last night.

Herman, I think your confusing imaging with soundstage.

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I don't think you can separate the two. If you hear the instruments spread out around the stage in the correct places then the imaging is good and you have a big soundstage. If the soundstage is collapsed you have poor imaging.

Isn't that correct?

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EXCELLENT thread! TYVM Bizango1 and all.

I love Romantic-period Classical music and have had season tickets to the Phoenix Symphony O's concerts for decades. Halls do sound different from one another, and the same one sounds different depending on where you sit. I've heard real orchestras playing in maybe a dozen halls around the country; some are really good (Boston), and some are not (Chicago's which is really shallow and tall). Our local Grady Gammage Auditorium, designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, at Arizona State University was described in an article (published in 'The Absolute Sound, IIRC) as one of the world's best-sounding concert halls. If the 'Civic Auditorium' is one of those combination basketball/rockconcert places, probably a real orchestra doesn't sound really good from anywhere in it.

Phoenix Symphony Hall seats about 2200 and sounds good if not excellent. It's not nearly as rich in the lower frequencies as I like (and as Grady Gammage is), but it's also no longer annoying in the high frequencies. We sit on the main floor, centered left-right and a quarter to a third of the way back. The sounds of the orchestra are nicely wide, there's excellent depth, and when the orchestra plays loudly, the sounds fill the hall beautifully and the level is WAY higher than my highest home level.

My multichannel system sounds as good as I've ever heard ANY music-reproduction system sound, but it only rarely even starts to come close to sounding as good as live music.

There is NO substitute for REAL music played in real spaces; buy more tickets, Biz, to other halls, and LOVE the real music!

A suggestion--colleges and universities with music programs present concerts and recitals very frequently, and if ASU's are typical, the vast majority are FREE. Find some to attend; you might fall in love!
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Herman, as I understand it:
soundstage refers to total width, height and depth
imaging refers to individual placement and scale within the soundstage, left to right, front to back, top to bottom.

Good thread! I believe when one becomes very focused on the "sound" the beauty and musical message can become quite obscure. One can tailor a system to meet desired sound preferences which may have little to do with actural instruments played live i.e. natural vs tuned sound.