Is soundstaging emblematic of reality?


Now that finally I have a system that soundstages excellently, I’m wondering if it’s actually  a vital component of a real concert experience.  In most genres of music, unless you’re sitting very close to the action, you don’t get the kind of precise imaging revealed in a good stereo setup.  That’s because microphones are usually (with some rare exceptions) placed close up. If you’re sitting in the middle to back section of an audience (which most people do) you certainly don’t hear anything close to holographic imaging, or even what most people accept as satisfactory imaging. 
Granted, it’s loads of fun to hear this soundstaging. And I certainly love it.  Some people might consider it the ideal music experience. But is it an essential component of musical enjoyment?


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I agree, totally with th OP. So much, that I don't know the reason for the post?
Since most recordings are made in a studio, the imaging heard in live performances (if any) has little to do with how most LP’s, CD’s, etc. "should" image. Studio recording engineers are for the most part not attempting to create a realistic, lifelike sound stage. Like it or not, live and recorded music are two different things. In Pop, the difference is absolute. Mixing consoles are used to place each separately-recorded instrument or vocalist somewhere between left and right speaker, an artificially created illusion, a card trick.
Music occurs in 4 dimensions like everything  else so the answer can only be yes. 
I would say it's not essential. There are many of us who prefer a classic performance, say a Furtwangler Beethoven or a Horenstein Mahler, in scratchy mono over a poor interpretation on a recording with acoustic gymnastics.

But it is an essential part of enjoying the concert experience, which is the reason why the San Francisco Symphony places the musicians further apart during recordings rather than in their concert positions. Makes it easier for the engineers to do their thing to fool us with the interaural time difference in our hearing.