With many classical recordings, on my system it sounds as if much of the orchestra is located behind/beyond the wall behind the speakers. Studio recordings can be engineered in a number of different ways. All I know is that I have some pop/rock CDs where, for instance, it definitely sounds as if the bass guitar or the drums are well behind the lead singer.
3-Dimensional Soundstage
I have appreciated a quite nice separation of instruments in my system's soundstage. I have read many times about people experiencing depth in their music and have never appreciated this. I was talking to an audiophile friend this week about it and he brought up the fact that recorded music is a mix of tracks and how could there be any natural depth in this? If there was a live recording then yes, it is understandable, but from all studio music that is engineered and mixed, where would we get depth? Are the engineers incorporating delays to create depth?