The best "imaging" speakers?

I’ve found that imaging is mostly a factor of proper setup, proper room treatment and overall room acoustics. Most speakers will image if the above are addressed correctly. Yes, the speaker plays a part after that, but until you have those other 3 set right you can’t really compare one speaker vs another to say which is "best".

Good to read common sense and experience in few lines.....

I will add mechanical resonance controls, and electrical grid house controls to help better focusing of the imaging....

I call that 3 embeddings ways for any audio system....More important than even the choice of electronic components sometimes...

There is many brand of speakers that can produce imaging but do not or do it wrongly because of insufficient controls not only of the acoustics but of the noise level of the house and of the vibrations-resonance problem....

We can all drop names of speakers but the question is how to make them imaging?

:)

I think every pair of speakers I’ve owned imaged well. Some speakers are easier to place than others. Some companies take the time to match each pair to within a half a dB of each other, some believe in a narrow baffle some use horn loading tweeters and some will flush mount them. I did have 1 pair that imaged better, as in spooky detail, but the tweeters were cheap and let the rest of the design down.

By far and away: 

Ensemble Ondiva
And
Stenheim Alumine 5

Image precision is primarily delivered by the first-arrival sound, and is degraded by very early reflections from the speaker itself (including diffraction), and also by early room reflections, but not so much by later reflections unless they are too strong.

Envelopment or immersion ("you are there") is delivered primarily by a clear differentiation between the first-arrival sound and the later reflections, which means that early reflections are once again particularly undesirable.

Early reflections are not all bad - for instance early sidewall reflections can can make it sound like the soundstage is wider than the space between the speakers, something that most of us enjoy. But the same auditory mechanism which expands the soundstage to the outside due to strong early sidewall reflections also reduces imaging precision and in particular soundstage depth, so it’s a trade-off.

These are not the only things that matter, the time coherence of the speaker also matters. ("Phase coherence" is virtually a marketing term and imo usually means very little.)

So ime the IDEAL balance might be really good first-arrival sound, then little or no early reflections, and then a lot of (but too much!) spectrally-correct late reflections. "Late" within the context of home audio being "about 10 milliseconds behind the first-arrival sound". This can be accomplished with a combination of speaker choice and setup, and maybe room acoustic treatment.

One example might be, a pair of relatively uniform-pattern fullrange dipole speakers positioned at least five feet out from the wall behind them, perhaps with a considerable amount of toe-in to minimize early same-side-wall reflections.

The best imaging I have ever heard was from a pair of Supravox wizzerless 8" fullrange drivers, listening nearfield in a large room, with one aimed at each ear. Sweet spot was head-in-a-vice, soundstage was incredibly deep, but the presentation wasn’t "you are there".

Best imaging with more practical speakers was Earl Geddes’ personal three-Summas-plus-subs system in his dedicated listening room. This system also did an excellent job with "you are there", but not the very best I’ve heard. Sweet spot was exceptionally wide.

The best "you are there" I have heard was from a pair of SoundLab Ultimate fullrange electrostats in a large room, set up with maybe seven or eight feet behind them. Again, wide sweet spot (but not as wide as Earl's Summas, relative to room width). 

Duke
yeah I’m a SoundLab dealer

I am proud to say that i create "imaging" and "soundstage" at nearfield listening (3 feet) and at regular listening (7 feet) in my smal irregular room by passive materials controlling acoustic methods and also with many different active methods (mainly different size and kind of resonators)

Most people stick on their favorite brand of speakers, completely unconscious of the importance of the room acoustic.... I even speak with some " reviewer" that argue against the too much importance given to acoustic.... He was not conscious of the fact that the Greek theater exist before Edison.... Hi-Fidelity recording of sound is slave of acoustic rendering by the room at the end.... :)

I call my method the triple embeddings of an audio system...(mechanical,electrical,and acoustical)

Give me a good speakers, certainly half of them are good, i will make it imaging like crazy.... If not his design is very bad....

Like engineering electronic design, acoustic is an art of trade-off, your ears are the judges.....And we live with our judges then why not using them?

I call that listening experiments, it is fun, and the only way to reach, incrementally, one step at a time, at low cost, audio paradise....