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

“You simply don’t hear it with live music....”. Harrylavo
I completely agree.

Holography is an artificial effect. 
However, I don’t disagree with ANYTHING  hifidream said above.
I just wouldn’t call it holographic. It’s excellent soundstaging.
To me, holography exists when a solo singer is spookily suspended in air in front of you.  That doesn’t happen in real life.
I guess we’re dealing in semantics.

RV Piano, In that same vein, I first heard holographic imaging in a medium sized demo room at a dealers. They had a CJ 5 preamp driving a Threshold SA amp, driving a pair of smallish Thiel 4’s (preceding the CA series) using a Oracle TT (I don’t recall cartridge) and playing Opus Three "Depth of Image" which has a cut where there is a small group playing pan pipes. If you closed your eyes you could feel that you could walk on stage amoungst the players just as you could if this all occurred in your living room with real players. Obviously I was so impressed I still recall most of the detail. FWIW although for years this was a goal I never achieved it in my music room. I have a long list of the reasons why. :-)

Gulpson, A fair observation, but to make this omission of a warranted  moniker change worse, I've been posting here since about 2002! I think a lot of folks have not bothered with my posts. Who would want to take advise from a newbie. :-)

@rvpiano  Semantics, yes.  Imaging and soundstaging are not the same thing, but *are* complementary.  Simply (simplistically?) imaging~clear definition/location of a particular sound source in the space; soundstaging~the sonic painting of the limits of that overall space, width and depth and perhaps height.  If a speaker does one of these right, it's hard to believe it would do the other particularly badly.