Soundstage and image height, does it exist?

the human hearing mechanism encodes height information based on frequency contouring caused by the shape of the ear. there is a tone map in the brain that instantly "translates" certain directional sounds as "higher" or "lower." SOME stereo music recordings contain enough of this information, a FEW of them. i have heard it demonstrated on the LEDR [Listening Environment Diagnostic Recording] on a Chesky test disc, with the synthetic cabasa rising above one speaker and sailing across the ceiling to the other speaker, as well as sailing backwards. 

The brain always fills in information and creates illusions that are not real. Close your eyes and listen to vocals, they invariably appear to be dead centre, but there is no speaker there, its an illusion created in your brain, you hear two separate signals one in each ear, your brain processes that and informs you its from the middle, its not is it. Soundstage is the same, some systems give much wider soundstage, more often how they placed is more important. 

of course it exists...WHY its there? the differences among sound at the source, often 2 lil boxes, how it fills our room and our ears...theres a ot going on there. our brains make sense of it. there must be a whole slew of factors at play. the size and dimension of soundstage is quite different from system to system in my house, and tweaking each system changes it. my desktop system has a wild freakin 3D soundstage thats really high...well, when i lower my speakers, the sound stage height lowers. when i flip em upside down it changes again. barely change the toe-in and i get pretty significant changes in width and separation, placement of sounds. ive only recently learned of this holographic experience, and man its wild. but of course its real. you have sound coming at you in a particular manner from a particular place and places. 

we perceive sound as 3 dimensionally with our ears as we do the world around us with our eyes. 

cool stuff. im fascinated. 

In my fully acoustically treated house of stereo with 9 ft ceiling, I have used 40" tall towers and 69" ones. Both pairs projected imaging all the way to the top of the wall. So, in my case, yes. 

I cannot give a technical explanation, but I definitely have experienced a soundstage.  My listening room is untreated, but filled with soft furniture, carpet and drapes.  I stream music using McIntosh solid state electronics and Klipsch La Scala speakers.  It is not the same with all recordings.  Some of the best have been old recordings from the 1950's as well as newly issued material.  At its best, the music comes from each side, above and behind me, and the speakers "disappear."  I have even experienced a soundstage with headphones.  I recall a Tony Scott recording where the clarinet clearly "appeared" from across the room.  I speculate that it involves the quality of the recording and the interplay between my ears and brain.  The soundstage also expands after listening for a while, which reinforces my speculation that the brain becomes acclimated to the sound, and then produces the soundstage.