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

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.

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.