How important is it for you to attain a holographic image?

Go listen to some live acoustic music at your local high school, community college, college, church or your friend’s house down the street - “free of charge” usually - so no excuses 😀 If you think holographic imaging doesn’t matter then appparently you listen to arena rock, terribly miked symphonic music or you are deaf.

As I said previously, there’s a difference between sound staging and “holographic effect”. What you most typically get at a live concert sitting in an auditorium is sound staging, not holography.  A holographic effect is produced by microphones placed in a location where few people sit.
Perhaps if you’re sitting in a small setting such as a club where you’re close to the performers you might get something approaching this effect.

@michaelgreenaudio,

"I read people saying they have part and not able to get all, it makes me wonder what are they waiting on."

’I’ve heard (and have owned a couple) systems of lesser quality where it was relatively easy to get a "dimensional" sound from stage rear, and had pretty good imaging as well (at least across the front of the stage), but as things progressed for me over the years, the challenge has been to get the soundfield to fully fill in all the areas in between the front of the stage and the back and do so believably.’

Is that what you are referring to? I may have, through poor word choice on my part, have given you the wrong impression on my own system’s status...I did not mean to imply that it was a ’challenge’ that I did not overcome, but that it was accomplished in stages, by degrees, with varying methods of placement, noise floor reduction, grounding, power factor correction and power treatments. No waiting on anything here, not these days...quite the contrary. But, I can see how anyone might misconstrue what I said.

Regards

Just as live, there's also a great difference in listening to a good recording of a jazz trio and an 80-piece symphony orchestra.

On a competent system you can hear the space of the venue of the recording in terms of three dimensions and reverberant decay and echos, that sort of thing. Assuming it was recorded live in a good hall, like say Boston or Chicago or Vienna or Berlin. So in that sense, in terms of a real soundstage, the recording on a good system might be more accurate and revealing than many seats in the hall. Look at the LP or the CD as an archaeological site that requires work in order to extract all the glorious details including soundstage parameters.