What would you say is THE MOST important factor to good imaging?

I never knew good imaging in my room until DIY room treatments - first reflection points and bass traps on the front wall.  Instant huge improvement, even with my very modest system.  Are treatments the biggest influence?  In my experience maybe.  But of course everything matters.  I agree that the recording has a great deal to do with it. A flat/dead recording will probably never image well.  Also, I still enjoy listening to occasional metal but I never really get good imaging as with other genres.

catdoorman  seems to imply that mono recordings don’t image well or not at all.  I believe that is not true.  Sure they don’t throw instruments from side to side across the stage, but most of my mono recordings, especially vintage recordings present a big, rock solid believable image that I find very satisfying.  Julie London sounds like she is in the room.  In fact, my most expensive cartridge is mono to service a large mono collection.  Anyone else like this?

Hi,
best speaker position for start, synergy with power amp follows, when everything is optimised including cabling for signal & power things will be more in focus. If you want to dig further any decent room tratment will make them dissapear.

Big part is the recording. Other components having superior phase characteristics.

a good bag of ganja
mexicola gold
and some pink floyd
yea