Since 99.99% of commercial recordings were made with little or no consideration for sound quality, let alone soundstage depth, it could be considered more than a little irresponsible to advocate upgrading in pursuit of this elusive soundstage depth.
I've heard 1000s of recordings and hardly any of them could be considered as being up to audiophile standards.
None of the Beatles recordings were anything above average recording quality. Some of the Kinks albums, esp their often remastered masterpiece The Kinks are the Village Green Preservation Society album have bloody awful sound quality. Small, squashed, zero bandwidth, no depth.
It's kind of ironic that one the best recorded albums in my collection is the 1959/63 collaboration between Vera Lynn and Kenneth McKellar, The Wonderful World of Nursery Rhymes.
It's one of those rare ones that has real stage presence, you can easily picture the performers before you.
On any system regardless of price.
Upgrading can certainly give you more bandwidth, more precision, more separation, more detail, but it cannot give you what was never there in the first place.
Not unless you're into analysing exactly what the producers were doing with their 24 track mixing desks to a degree that no one ever intended you to. One that's liable to also induce a headache due to it being so unnatural.
We should remember that one of the very best recorded albums of recent history was also one of the most simplest. Mostly for its exquisite sonics, due more to serendipity rather than intent I suspect, the Cowboy Junkies Trinity Session album recorded on a portable machine in a church has subsequently gone down in audiophile legend.
There are also some very good reasons why the demonstration music used at shows regularly features the likes of Pink Floyd's DSOTM, Steely Dan and tinkly jazz. Engineers and producers operating in a cut throat business are usually far far too busy trying to make money than worry about what a few audiophiles might think about. Bands and artists generally don't seem to care much about anything other than commercial success either.
Selling, not sound quality is the main game in town.
So let's not kid anyone, out of the millions of commercial recordings there's probably less than a 100 that could be said to be of audiophile standard and possessing genuine soundstage depth.
Encouraging folks to engage in an everlasting search for things that do not exist can only do our hobby ultimate harm.
https://www.discogs.com/release/4351624-Vera-Lynn-Kenneth-McKellar-The-Wonderful-World-Of-Nursery-Rhymes
