Solid state amplifiers and sound stage, especially front to back "depth"

Regarding an amp or any other electronic gear upstream’s relative ability to do imaging,  it’s generally about achieving low distortion and detail retrieval. That is needed to best deliver the spatial cues that enable imaging captured in a recording completely.  
Then of course the speakers setup and room acoustics determine exactly how those cues are rendered and imaging and soundstage actually produced.

That makes sense the files in the above link I posted are to test the imaging of your system. 

Totally holographic. Same setup by same vendor was just OK at local shows in more conventional and less optimized room setups.

Very interesting post mapman...

For sure it takes a very good amplifier first but like you said and i said,  ACOUSTIC is important on the same level at least...

Are the SS amps fully burned in? I find that a 600 -800 hour burn in helps bring out subtle details in imaging.

The other thing I'm thinking is resonance and vibration.  Tube amps are more resistant to this factor.  So if not already used, good isolation devices will help.  The best in my experience are those from critical mass systems, which will take your audio to a whole new level. 

Best wishes

Skimming through other’s input I think there is another aspect that hasn’t been touched upon and that is the source recording quality. I’ve got a BAT VK-600 heavy duty solid state amp coupled with the BAT VK-5i tube amp with my Apogee ribbon speakers and I’ve found that more often than not recordings have excellent left to right, but truly great imaging that also have deep front to back complex spacing require a top quality recording engineer using the right equipment (particularly analog) and this is much rarer. This is particularly a challenge with rock recording roughly around the 80’s era. Once I hear really excellent dynamic recordings such as, for example, many of Jan Garbarek’s (ECM generally as well), Radiohead - King of Limbs, Trifonic - Emergence, just to name a few, I don’t soon forget them and I find myself returning to them like sirens as the years pass!

There is lot more involve reproducing sound stage depth. First and foremost is the recording itself. Audio chain cannot reproduce "depth" if it not encoded in to the recording. Most of my classical music recordings have excellent depth or front-to-back layering.


Speakers, placement, listening room, and listening position/height play a huge role reproducing this perceived depth. Amplifier comes next. I cannot comment about tube amps being better or worse reproducing depth. My Thiel 3.6 speakers are driven by SS amps (Mark Levinson 23.5 and Krell KST 100) and I cannot be more happy with the results of reproducing front-to-back layering. I use tube preamps (Cary SLP 03 and VTL TL 2.5) with NOS tubes. But I know friends who got similar results with SS preamps as well.


I also find that my LPs have more depth than some of the CDs. Past weekend, I was listening to Gustav Mahler's 6th symphony by Jascha Horenstein conducting Stockholm Philharmonic Orchestra. This is a 2 LP set and front-to-back layering in addition to left-to-right imaging was excellent. The Big Sound by Johnny Hodges and the Ellington Men is another LP with excellent left-to-right imaging and front-to-back layering of musicians. My rock albums have some of the worst reproduction of depth including Beatles albums. So it is not just one thing, but a combination of many factors.