Looking for the next level in imaging...

@mijostyn

I want to hear exactly what is in the recording. I do not want to hear any editorialization by the room.

How is this possible without attending the recording session? Don’t we want a presentation that we consider natural and representative of the live performance. In other words, all of this depends upon our own preferences. Many of us must compromise due to our room, budget and other constraints, but ultimately we want our system to, as much as possible, have seeming presence of the musicians and instruments in a pleasing space.

Some musicians don't care...Some musicians care, but have to compromise a lot...All kinds of recordings get produced in very unfavorable circumstances. Even an artist who cares will quit being nitpicky when he needs to get paid ( considering the fact that a vast majority of the masses who buy the albums don't care).

I have demo'd my rigs to multiple musicians from different genres, a multichannel object based/spatial rig, a 2 channel rig with BACCH and purist stereo rig (I can literally do that in the same room).

I've asked them, "You are sitting here listening to 3 different presentations of your album...How would you prefer your album sounded? Demo 1, Demo 2 or Demo 3?

Not a single one of them has picked purist stereo, thus far!

I have listened to omni speakers and they do produce sound that fills the room but lack pinpoint imaging. 

The answer does not simply depend on speakers alone. A nice 300B amplifier with speakers to match should do the trick. 

Remember in the movie, Back to School, Rodney Dangerfield pays Kurt Vonnegut Jr. to write an essay for him about one of his own books.  Rodney‘s character gets an F on the paper with the comment, “I know you didn‘t write this paper but whoever did knows nothing about Kurt Vonnegut Jr.“. There is some truth to that.  We interpret things in ways an artist or designer never imagined.

Perhaps musicians listen about as well as we would performing.

I prefer stereo sound without tone controls or spatial processing.  It‘s taken me years to accept listening to music reconstituted back from binary code.

"Every recording  has a correct volume, a volume at which it sounds best. This is because our ear's frequency response changes with volume."

The "volume control" is to be used like the "focus" knob on a microscope or telescope.

is it possible to break down or quantify the importance of the different components and room design and tuning?

For example—and I am just throwing out numbers as examples—would it be 30% room design, acoustics and tuning (to get a holographic image); 40% speakers; and 30% front end? Is it possible to break it down? And to refine it even more, like ratios of importance for the front end (ie, amp, preamp, DAC, source)? If percentages are unrealistic, maybe a ranked priority order would work?

@patrickdowns

back in 2017 i responded to a thread question; "What is the most important part of a system" .......which does somewhat answer your question. i don’t feel you can assign percentages, since the process is dynamic and builds on itself.....and there are too many starting points and variations and matters of preference.

but i still see things this way generally. i’m only linking this since i don’t want to derail the nice thread away from the "imaging" focus.

https://forum.audiogon.com/posts/1399899

as far as room tuning and how it relates to imaging; i’ve posted links to how i did my personal process back in 2015 before. it starts with having a personal reference sound. sometimes that is the issue; we all don’t possess a locked in reference to chase to guide us. sometimes we delegate our system character to a dealer, or friend and follow their advice. it’s s perfectly valid way to go and honest. but better is when you do have the light go on and you know where you are going and so can attack it yourself. then; if you are lucky enough to have a dedicated space where you have the flexibility to be able to do what you want; then it’s doable.

here are those room tuning links to what i did back in 2015. lots of details. and note that i had been in my purpose built dedicated room for 11 years in 2015, so i had crashed and burned a number of times and underwent a baptism of fire to get to the point of my final 9 month long dash to success.

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/almost-free-and-4-inches-the-final-1.17389/

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/almost-free-and-4-inches-the-final-1.17389/page-3#post-314941

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/suck-out-fixed-i-think.18116/

https://www.whatsbestforum.com/threads/suck-out-fixed-i-think.18116/page-2#post-329496