"Holographic" presentation

This is what recording engineers do: Record things to their or the producer's or the artist's taste (mic selection, eq, possible compression, ambient information either natural or from devices), and pan each instrument to wherever they think it needs to go...little left, more middle, little right, lots of left, lots of right...that's it. Soundstage accomplished. Any decent stereo rig can reproduce this and if it's isolated (headphones or speakers stuck to your head) it can sound less "live" as in the actual world there is air and natural blending between speakers, as long as your ass sits between 'em. Tone, treble cues, bass nodes, yo mama, all differ.

I think there may be some confusion with terminology. The often-touted
advantages in soundstage presentation of mono-bloc amps have to do with
improvements in stereo separation and specificity; sometimes resulting in a
better defined soundstage and better defined images within that
soundstage, but not necessarily holographic. "Holographic" has
usually meant a presentation in which individual images are, not only well
defined in space with little image wander, but also dimensional with the
sense that there is air behind the images and not just to the sides and front;
IOW, 3D. As far as amplification goes, in my experience that trick is best
accomplished by good tube equipment; mono-bloc or not.

It is all in the quality of the implementation. I have had some excellent monoblocks through here, including Lamm M1.1s, Clayton M300s and M200s, and Acoustic Imagery Atsahs, and my current stereo amp is equal to the best of those and better than the others with regards to dimensionality and soundstage. From the amplifier, good channel separation is important as is low noise and the ability to provide detailed spacial cues. I suspect other, non amplifier related, factors play as big or greater a role such as room dimensions, speaker placement in the room including separation between speakers and distance from rear and side walls, listening position and ear height relative to the speakers, room treatment and other factors I haven't thought of. If the amp sounds good tonally and drives the speakers well, I would work on the room related issues first, to improve soundstage and dimensionality, before worrying about the difference between a stereo amp and monoblocks.

I owned an amp years ago that featured pornographic imaging. It was creepy so I sold it.

What brand was that? A buddy today just asked for an amp recommendation that did pornography well.