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

I'm OK with it being a parlor trick; I don't care how the effect is produced, so long as it's there.  Generally will settle for good 2D, as stereo systems and height is problematical at best.  But I love it when the soundstage stretches way back beyond the plane of the speakers, sometimes beyond the place of the front wall behind them.  This is especially important in recordings of things like concertos, where you really do want the orchestra behind the soloist.

Just as live, there's also a great difference in listening to a good recording of a jazz trio and an 80-piece symphony orchestra.

@rvpiano  Semantics, yes.  Imaging and soundstaging are not the same thing, but *are* complementary.  Simply (simplistically?) imaging~clear definition/location of a particular sound source in the space; soundstaging~the sonic painting of the limits of that overall space, width and depth and perhaps height.  If a speaker does one of these right, it's hard to believe it would do the other particularly badly.

@helomech +1  Well said!

Let's segway into a discussion of binaural recording and binaural sound reproduction.

Inches vs. feet.  Hence the use of the binaural recording head.

"hanging in front of the speakers".  Are we talking about a "forward" presentation, with the soundstage starting in front of the plane of the drivers?  I'm actually a fan of the opposite (laid back).

@newbee  Hence my belief that full-scale orchestral recordings are the toughest--and to some extent, impossible--test of systems and the rooms they're installed in.