Soundstaging and Imaging: The Delusion about The Illusion

One of my first jobs was calibrating the optics at US Army Map Service used for 3D imaging. The Zeiss Stereo optics are analogous to stereo audio inasmuch as the overlay of two different maps photographed from different angles, when viewed through stereo optics, appear in 3D. Ditto for 3D movies. 

Wharf: The poster didn’t comment about the size of his audio system to that of his listening room. He specifically focused on the reproduced soundstage in his listening room.

Had the poster said something about a frequency aberration in the room, like too much booming bass, then I would have concluded it was something about the sound system being out of kilt in the room.

Yet the poster suggested the room was “cutting off” the soundstage of reproduced sound.

@bdp24 - i heard that system a few times with the original big Tympani panels. When I bought my SP 3 and Dual 75a back in the day, the dealer demo’d the units I bought on just such a system. And I got to meet William Zane J in the early days as well when he was making the rounds- he was a pretty intimidating guy judging by how the dealer wanted to make sure he was happy. I wasn’t old enough, or invested enough in the ’business’ of the stuff (I slung gear as a kid and was an enthusiast) to care what he thought, other than that it was cool to meet him since he had already achieved legendary status, thanks in part to Harry Pearson, but man, that stuff sounded so good compared to most of the other gear around then.
One interesting anecdote on records. I’ve long had copies of "Way Out West," a sort of classic jazz warhorse that gets played periodically because, well, Sonny Rollins. I never found a clean early pressing for reasonable money, so relied on remasters. The original Analogue Productions cut, which I think was cut by Doug Sax, sounded pretty good, but it had a giant hole in the middle- very typical of early stereo hard panning. I eventually got a 45 cut that Hoffman and Gray did and it had an image in the middle. I asked Hoffman what was up with that - he said that the resolution of that cut was so much better (whether source tape, mastering chain or technique, I dunno) that I was hearing a center image because of the sound bouncing off the back wall of the room where it was recorded.
I’ve still got an original stereo cut on my ’list’ for that one.....
Back to our regularly scheduled program....

I look forward to someday experiencing this--I'm sure it will take a better system than I have.  At present I have a hard time understanding how something as simple as a microphone can do what something as complex as an ear does.

I've never gone to a concert with one ear plug in so I suppose I'm hearing the  consert in sterio, from my prospective in the seat I'm sitting in of course.