Acoustics experts - a little help please

@deep_333  why would you say:

"Setting expectations straight, 3D is a foolish concept concept in purist stereo." -?

I'm primarily listening to CD thru McIntosh MX-113 and a 2200 amplifier, and Sonus Faber Cremona speakers. My experience with this is 180 degrees opposite your assertion.

It is dependent on the recording quality (and most modern releases won't cut it) but in my treated room listening to pop, jazz, classical and even some older electronic music I can get a massive sound stage with well-defined height, width & depth. Sometimes the center image seems to float behind the speakers and sometimes well on front of them. On many tracks a single element will sound like it's behind the wall that's behind my head.

The effect can be even more pronounced when listening to my (spotlessly clean) vinyl with a Rega P6 and Ortofon 2M Black cart. I blame this added sense of space to the crosstalk & delay inherent to vinyl playback, that and the extremely high quality of some vintage lacquer cuts from tape-not-digital. "Lush" barely describes the experience.

@deep_333  you're correct that I was not thinking of object-based surround or 3D audio at all. For my uses and room I haven't pursued expanding past 5.1 in my surround-sound music, and I only own one Atmos capable music disc (Abbey Road on Blu-Ray) anyway.

A point I was implying and not outright stating though should be clarified:  a simple, clean & accurate stereo setup in a moderately treated listening room can deliver spectacular results when playing back vintage, high quality stereo recordings delivered in any format. You might be blown away at the information you have missed, buried those records that you've listened to already 300 times. And if you're hearing more on headphones than from your pricey, well regarded home speakers (rather than vice-versa) the untreated listening room or indifferent speaker placement may be the problem.

@deep_333  I have around a dozen of SW's 5.1 surround sound remixes and I'm a big fan (have not heard Atmos mixes of those yet of course). I wish Giles Martin had even half Wilson's skill at this.

I have zero interest in running my records thru object oriented surround sound extraction.  I'm happy to leave such separation to people with more skill and access to the multitracks.  Also, running 50 year old vinyl thru 50-65 year old electronics makes way more sense to me than to digitize them.

It's a rarity that a CD version of a vintage recording pleases me as much as the vinyl cut straight from tape (there are a tiny handful of exceptions where the original vinyl was botched - one example: Badfinger 'Ass' sounded pretty bad when released, the 2010 cd is a profound improvement..