Do I need BOTH amp and pre to be sonic holography?

Sonic Holography was one of Bob's ploy's to get people to purchase his products. These names really meant nothing.

Say what??

get yourself a good tube amp.
sonic holography is just another phrase for sound stage

back in the 80's i owned a carver preamp w/that sonic holography feature built in & used it all the time. i had the m4.0t amp at the time which emulated a tube amp supposedly. for it's time i thought it sounded great. carver used to sell an individual holography component (small black box that Zydo mentions above) that was installed inline somewhere - like a tube buffer i'm guessing? seek out that box if you can find it or just buy zydo's. just for grins i'd love to hear that setup again:)

Carver's system, otherwise known as the 'Sonic Holocaust' was a way to clean up the stereo image.
When recording say....just for example.....a singer and band with a pair of microphones, each mic will get information....somewhat time delayed, perhaps, from the opposite side.
Sonic Hologram will subtract right side information from the LEFT and left side information from the RIGHT. This eliminates the 'crosstalk', if that's the right word.

Polk did the same with speakers a few years later, by having a pair of midrange drivers about 6" apart horizontially. The distance was decided by the space between ears.
They fed signals between speakers to accomplish the same 'subtraction' and used the distance between drivers to account for the time delay.

I never heard the system. I'd like to hear it with headphones.