I think we largely agree, maybe not on every point; yours was an excellent post. Thank you.
I keep coming back to the idea that these soundstage effects are psycho-acoustic. The acoustic comes from speaker positioning and room factors. The mental aspect is what a listener experiences while listening; some listeners may be more susceptible than others.. Some role is played by recording, mastering and performance context. No single factor is their cause. If such audiophile effects are a 'sonic attribute' they are not independent from individual experience and thus not objective.
Listening to my stereo I am generally satisfied with the experience of an orchestra in a hall.
As Tim points out that a sonic thing (a phenomenon) like walk on the stage level of lifelike-ness requires a range of things to come together and that all starts with the recording.
If there is a high degree of coherence and resolution in the recording it does make it possible for a well setup system to establish the cues for this phenomena captured in the recording (if this is well preserved all through the chain) it can (at levels) follow through to become apparent to us in the listening experience. I don’t think in a system that’s fundamentally well sorted that it’s (at a level) rare… maybe the final reality suspension-ness of it all comes at quite differing levels. Certainly full range dipole planars have a head start in recreating these cues for me.
But as this effect is recording dependent and as my priorities have shifted to being more performance focussed in my library choices recording quality isn’t always the absolute holographic kind so it becomes a coincidental occurrence more so than any kind of a primary goal. As I have (dare I say it touch wood
) satisfied many of my essential system goals I’ve become less and less audiophile driven and more and more fundamentally music and performance orientated. Just a bit of a different balance of aims but I still love it all.
But if I was back in my earlier extreme audiophile-at-all-costs and take no prisoners phase (say 10 or 12 years ago particularly when the Magnepans shaped most of my listening experiences) I’d have probably said the walk in stage experience could have been a more attractive primary goal for me to chase and would have chosen the recordings to highlight this as a priority.
But it’s a tough reality that the best performances just aren’t necessarily directly correlated at all to the most ideal recordings.
So now I’d see the audiophile paranormal (said with love) just as a more occasional data point that happens but the recordings I choose these days aren’t being informed by the need to seek out this kind of audiophile oriented moment as a primary aim. If sonic phenomena like this comes through well great, it’s not the focus or does it contribute highly to my music appreciation. I actually don’t want it to pull my focus away from being in the music.
I suppose it comes back to what I found when I get caught up in the at times distractions of audiophile attached phenomena I maybe also lose my way by fixating too much on any particular aspect of it if it isn’t actually my real goal. So knowing what we’re chasing allows us to navigate better (or create a hierarchy) through the minefield of audio illusions.
Maybe if the music was not quite as engaging my attention might make me want to stray back more fixedly up on the recreated stage as something that can get my Apple Watch move goal happening (virtually) but that’s about it. It’s a magic thing but it isn’t the main show for me. I prefer it when my focus is just in the music making and not so much in the mechanisms of the sound making.
It takes a great recording to help bring these kinds of moments and that is something that can the amazing but engaging performances and phenomenal music more brings the music to life for me so the holographic walk in recording (as phenomenal as it can be) takes a comfortable second place to more fundamental engagement in the music and a well chosen phenomenal stand up performance for me any time.
