How important is it for you to attain a holographic image?

The most holographic imaging I've ever heard has been in a friends JBL M2's.  I haven't listened extensively but the thing that is particularly astonishing is the "size" of the localized images of various instruments.  This is all in classical music.  Rather than even slightly larger than life images the individual instruments seem to be there hanging in space in a way I've never experienced with any other system.  Driven by a decent but far from spectacular front end consisting of one of the better Parasound preamps, an Oppo, and these huge digital crown amplifiers that have to be kept in an adjacent room because of fan noise.  I need to listen more to that system but off the top of my head it all just seems far too esoteric to me.  The aesthetics of those speakers are not my cup of tea and I don't have an adjacent room for the requisite crown amps that also run the dsp crossover/eq of that system.  When I first saw it I rolled my eyes a bit but hearing is believing.  They are also setup in a great room, great rectangular room, probably 5 feet to the rear wall and maybe 8 feet or more to the side walls.

The other thing I would point out is I hear live symphonic music here in Atlanta at least twice monthly and in my experience live music doesn't sound like the all that focused with regard to image localization of individual instruments as I experienced with the JBL M2's in my note above.  The sound in real live seems a bit more diffuse.  Absolutely effortless as the power builds in orchestral crescendos.  I have been to concerts all over the world at this point in my life and it is true that different concert halls sound "different" with some having more of a burnished/warmish sound than others for example.  Of course in concerto recordings, recordings just about any recording, the level of solos in balance against the level of the orchestra is far different from real life in a concert hall unless you're sitting in the first 5 rows.  In a recording the solo roles in concertos are usually pumped up much higher and more pronounced than I experience in a concert hall.

@pwhinson I don’t doubt your friends JBL m2 setup sounds amazing....

many people on this site would regard that system as ‘substandard’ or ‘not worthy’ of comment, but I have a feeling it works great.

i have been playing with Crown XLS 1500 and 1502 class d amplifiers.  They are meant for sound reinforcement and/or live gigs. They have internal crossovers and can produce some serious watts!  And they are super quiet, no buzzing or humming, and no heat. You can easily afford them and the fans never come on. At one point in a bi-amp setup I was using four of them in mono and throwing a combined 6000watts at my Infinity Kappas. The Crown XLS are great on the mids and highs—tube like, holographic—but for the lows they don’t have the dampening factor to stop the absolutely insanely designed lowend of the Infinity Kappas.

Honest I think the Crown XLS 1500 amps are very nice. 

Try finding a pair of JBL 4408’s or 4406’s and use a Crown or two to drive them. You can get holography in style and on the cheap!

I obtain holographic 3-d positioning only after I clean up all my electrical grid and also my audio grid...Before that with the same gear all sound was more between the speakers than atmospherically suspended around them with clear pin point accuracy of position... I am in near listening... I obtain also tonal accuracy only after this cleaning, then cleanliness, all things being equals about choice of gear, is the foremost fundamental necessity and the most underestimated one of all factors in audio...Money dont buy perfection, experiments and thinking helps very much more...

Huh... I just plug my stuff straight into the wall of my 45 year old condo and it presents deep, wide, towering imaging. If your gear takes that much effort to get that sound out of, I'd suggest an antique Marantz front end, a diy amp, and a pair of mid-range Focals with room treatments made from whatever curtains and carpets you have laying around.