I presume the OP is referring to what is typically called soundstaging/imaging. (I’ll just use "imaging" for short here).
My take:
It is quite important as part of the experience in listening to my stereo.Otherwise, I wouldn’t bother having "stereo" speakers.
I certainly don’t demand imaging at the expense of other qualities. I’m a tone/timbre guy first. A speaker absolutely has to have, to my ear, an organic and beguiling tone, wood sounds like wood, sparkling guitar strings, shimmering metallic cymbals, reedy-sounding reed instruments. All that stuff. If a system doesn’t have that, all the imaging in the world won’t allow me to enjoy the sound. I also value palpability/dynamics.There are speakers that soundstage in a wispy fashion. The drummer that is up front and physical on one pair of speakers can be placed deep back in the soundstage in another pair, but with a loss of palpabiilty and drive. I’ll take the speaker that gives me the presence and drive of the musician with some sacrifice of imaging/depth over the speaker with the huge soundstage with less palpability.
But of course, I want it all. Once I have a system doing great tone, and good palpability, imaging is a wonderful and important addition to my enjoyment. For one thing, a speaker that images well tends to do so at least partially as a result of being low coloration, so the speaker "disappears" from the sound. The result of lower obvious speaker coloration aides timbral realism, and the result tends to leave the music floating free of the speakers too. I had Harbeth speakers for a while, wondering if they could help me downsize from my bigger Thiel speakers. I love the Harbeth sound, but they just couldn’t compete with my Thiels because the Thiels did tone at least as well (even more realistic IMO), and the Harbeths always had a more congested sense of imaging/depth/soundstaging.Hearing symphonies through the Thiels was more reminiscent of being transported to actually hearing a symphony, eyes closed. Recordings of The Los Angeles Guitar Quartet on the Harbeths showed great timbre and clarity. But on the Thiels, I got not only that, but the wall of my room just "melted away" with the guitars sounding real-sized, and the musicians arrayed before me in a way that made me feel transported to their concert. That added sense of realism is magical.
Mono sources can be good on a good speaker insofar as you will get a good feeling for the music - tone, timbre, dynamics, presence. But part of the appeal to me in high end audio is, to some degree, a sense of believably (if not sheer realism). For a seated listener, Mono is far too limited to ever do what’s needed for realism. Every band and symphony isn’t just lined up behind one another in mono in real life. On a good stereo system with imaging, a Tympony roll just ignites the sense of space - it just blooms - more like the real thing, on a system with great soundstaging and imaging.
And I totally disagree with those who claim we don’t hear soundstaging/imaging in real life. Of course we do; that’s why we have two ears, for acute directionality to sound sources. I tended to sit close at the symphony as I like vividly distinct timbre among the instruments, and it imaged like mad when I closed my eyes. Sure, imaging CAN certainly sound artificial depending on the recording. But it CAN also sound more natural, depending on how it was captured/mixed.
When I play my system for non-audiophiles one of the reasons they are so stunned and comment on how "real" it sounds, is that they are reacting to is the soundstaging imaging. Some don’t even know that it was even possible that music playback had such properties. I played Bernard Herrmann’s Taxi Driver score for a musician pal and he said "Incredible. It was like I was THERE, on the floor with the players around me, as it was being recorded."
But not only is imaging helpful if the goal is to attain some semblance of believability to recreating sound. It’s also to me a compelling artifact in it’s own right.
I listen to lots of electronic/synth music. Obviously, all the soundstaging/imaging is entirely artificial. But I LOVE listening to my favorite electronica on my high end system because, especially with the precise, dense imaging/soundstaging I have in my system, it’s almost like being transported to an alien realm. The different sounds and shapes of synthesizers, from buzz-saw sound tearing the air, to tiny sparkles, to throbbing midrange tones etc, just magically "appear" around the room. It has an amazing cinematic quality to the listening experience.
If high end audio were truly "only about the music" in a very narrow sense, I wouldn’t need high end audio. I can get in to music, and get the musical message on almost any system - my car radio, a blue-tooth speaker, I even truly enjoy listening to music on my iPhone’s speaker!
But High End audio to me offers a different way to experience music - "added value" as it were, and being immersed in the sound, and having the sensation of being transported to various spaces is part of that. It’s why I bother to sit down between a pair of stereo speakers in the first place.
I’ve been buying lots of older LPs and occasionally one shows up in mono. When sit between my speakers and hear that it’s mono, I no longer feel that compelled to sit between my speakers. I will tend to play mono albums and often listen from another room, doing something else.I still enjoy the music, the tone, the dynamics, I still boogie. But I just don’t find it compelling to situate myself in my system’s sweet spot because it just doesn’t pay the dividends that it does with a recording that has enveloping soundstaging, or nice imaging.
