Regarding tostadosunidos comments on the topic of the ability of a pair of speakers to reproduce depth:
I first heard the effect on the occasion of hearing a true high end system for the first time, a system being delivered and set up by Bill Johnson at his new ARC dealer in Livermore California (Bill was a pilot, and flew his own plane to dealer locations). It was a pair of the Magneplanar Tympani T-1 loudspeakers (which ARC was then distributing) bi-amped with a PC-1 passive x/o and D51 and D75 power amps, source a Thorens TD-125 Mk.2 turntable/ARC prototype arm/Decca Blue pickup into an SP-3 pre-amp.
Bill put a British EMI pressing of Holst’s The Planets on the table, and when the Jupiter movement played, there it was---the front row of the orchestra instruments were on the plane of the Tympanis, the back row (percussion) waaaay back from that plane. I had closed my eyes as the movement began, and at the shock of hearing the extreme depth of field opened them. I found myself looking at the wall behind the speakers, amazed by how much closer the wall was than the back of the orchestra appeared to be. The back of the orchestra appeared to be further away than the wall!
When an orchestra is recorded with a very small mic set-up (I believe EMI engineers employed the Decca 3-mic "tree" technique---3 mics facing the orchestra), the sound from the instruments furthest away from the mics are picked up by the mics later in time than those closest to them. When played back, that time differential is reproduced as the difference in distance. In contrast, a recording of an orchestra made employing close mic’ing contains no such depth information, so should be reproduced without it as well.
