Soundstaging and imaging are audiophile fictions.

Nirchy;

My point exactly.

Or, was it

GINGER or MARYANN?

Unclejeff: I'll take answer "C", which is "both of the above" : ) Sean
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As has been suggested above, the farther you are from the source the harder it is to pinpoint the location of various instruments. I'm sure the conductor of an orchestra has no problem discerning the 1st violin from the 2nd, although the same person might be challanged from the 25th row. After spending many hours and a small fortune putting together a high-end system, I would argue that we have a right to expect something that in many ways surpasses the live concert experience. I agree with Jeffery that imaging is the minimum that we should expect from a good system, and that "tonality, clarity, and dynamics" are more important objectives, but there's no reason to leave behind the spatial cues provided by stereo to achieve these things.

One point, I can only stress, is a concert is a visual as well as an aural event. We can perceive visual cues much more readily and acutely than aural cues. In a live concert event perhaps 90% of our acuity of senses is devoted to the visual. A critical listener might bring this down to 50%. So when we try to recreate this concert event in our homes, we are much more involved in the aural event (no matter how pretty or impressive our equipment is). Thus the audio manufacturers try to compensate this lack of visual acuity by creating a different set of structure to stimulate our aural acuity. One way to do this is through enlarging the soundstage and creating a strong sense of imaging/focus. Whether it is artificial or not, I personally do not care because this "artificiality" brings me closer to the music, which is all that I am after.

Sean, I find your statement interesting, regarding visual clues lowering our responses to audible clues. I find this to be absolutely true as far as listening to our rigs at home is concerned, not so however listening to live music in a hall, where visual contact gives me at least the illusion to pinpoint the source also aurally better. I cannot say, if this is an individual idiosyncracy of mine or if there are established scientific facts, which would prove me right or wrong.
It is true of course, what you state about dipoles. With clever placement however, the out of phase effect of these speakers cannot only be minimised but actually be used to good advantage. This is true especially, if your preferred software are large classical orchestras, recorded in halls with a fair amount of reverb to them. Here you can use the out of phase part of your presentation to a good end in mimiking the effects of the hall, therewith strengthening the psychological impact the music will have on you. It seems more "real" then in your listening environment, although of course actually less real regarding what is found in the actual mix on the mastertape. I've even gone so far in the pursuit of this effect to place a pair of Quad 63s at right angles to the main body of speakers, which I will blend in very carefully in order to get this "out of phase effect" with recordings which I find too dry, lacking natural reverb. In getting this right, there are other prices to pay of course. We all have to settle for that compromise which brings us the most in musical enjoyment.
By the way, we have a cable station here in Zurich, which sends lots of old Jazz in mono and I listen to a fair amount of classical music on mono lps. Compared to stereo, the soundstage is of course less wide, but the placement of instruments or groups of them in space in well recorded presentations, though not as pronounced as in stereo, is certainly there.....
Cheers,