Looking for the next level in imaging...

mikelavigne

a more traditional 2 way dynamic speaker system might be best for this priority.

Agreed. Below are the MBL's best (with a master tape source), an original music, and WTA.  Alex/WTA

MBL

Original music

WTA

BTW, the other speakers in the room include the modified JBL L200s (with increased cabinet volume, L300 long horns, slot tweeters, revised crossovers), one-off Big Red Supers (Altec 604E2s/Utah aux woofers) triamped with one-off electronic crossover and Marantz power amps), and Chartwell LS3/5As.

Room is 26’ x 16’ x 7.5-16 feet and about 5,000 cu ft.

None of these other speakers soundstage/image like the "Mermans" (so named for Ethel because of her loud and clear voice and disrespect for authority).

Depending on material, soundstage can be wider and deeper than the room and instruments can be located with accuracy as to their placement.  Sometimes stuff even sounds like it's behind you.

I use my own creation which include JBL 2241H (18"), JBL 1151J (9-1/2") and a modified Great Heil. The crossovers are of course of my own design.

This is an older video with some crossover mods done since, but you can see what we are dealing with. Of course don’t expect a YouTube captured on a Nikon DSLR video to image.

Martin Logan’s do space and purity, but like omni’s are not ideal for organically solid full frequency imaging. one reason is that the mid and lower bass uses dynamic drivers, a different type of driver, so the coherency in the low frequencies is reduced. this detracts from imaging.

a more traditional 2 way dynamic speaker system might be best for this priority. it makes the fewest mistakes.

imaging is about room<->speaker synergy, and room symmetry, combined with surface treatment of reflections. to get imaging that is ’right’ also requires that the room has good bass balance, so images are cohesive, and contain full frequencies.

with your budget, there are any number of quality 2 way speaker systems that can work.

do you have a dedicated room?

is it symmetric? how high is the ceiling? can the ceiling be treated?

windows or screen next to or behind the speaker?

any distortion in your signal path or speaker will restrict imaging by locating the sound coming from the speaker. so eliminating distortion anywhere promotes imaging everywhere since the signal transparency disconnects the sound from the speaker location. you hear less distortion, more of the music signal.

seating position will also be a factor. sitting in the near field and working on toe in and toe out will allow you to optimize imaging. near field means more direct sound, and less reflected sound. an advantage for imaging.

all these factors will effect the potential imaging of your system.

Lots of good ideas and suggestions as always.  Keep them coming.  To clarify my vision of image - I have the soundstage-  the presentation of instruments and locations. I’m lacking the 3D, the depth.  I have a little bit but know it can be improved.  The current speakers have been toyed with - toeing in more/less move wider/narrower and all it does is compact or expand the left to right image.  I have treated room and moved treatments around as well. I have also tilted speakers upward and downward everything has given minimal to depth. 

MBL is a poor choice for your quest.

Look at "concentric driver" designs....TAD, KEF Blade, etc.

Room treatment critical for imaging, quality of drivers critical (take B&W diamond tweeter for instance). My eye opening experience in 1987. Using Magnapan SMGs when I walked into Stereo shop and heard some good dynamic floor standers (Conrad Johnson "Synthesis" LM-210). Night-and-day difference. Best imaging ever were/are Dunlavy SC IV-A driven by ARC electronics.

This will be a simplified overview.

@polkalover, the "holy grail" of spatial quality is arguably the "you are there" presentation, wherein the venue spatial cues on the recording are perceptually dominant (whether they be real or engineered or both), rather than the "small room signature" cues of the playback room being perceptually dominant.

This can be accomplished by minimizing and/or disrupting the playback room’s cues, while effectively presenting the reverberation tails on the recording. The reverberation tails on the recording are the primary means by which the recording venue’s "sense of space" is conveyed, resulting in an enjoyable and/or realistic sensation of immersion/envelopment (depending on the recording).

Ideally we’d like the reverberation tails on the recording to arrive from many directions; to be spectrally correct; to be neither too loud nor too quiet; and to decay neither too fast nor too slow. With this end in mind, we can think of the in-room reflections as the CARRIERS for the reverberation tails on the recording! So in practice, we want the right amount of spectrally-correct reflection energy arriving from many directions; beginning to arrive neither too early nor too late; and decaying neither too fast nor too slow.

The earliest in-room reflections are the ones most detrimental to precise image localization, and they are also the ones which most strongly convey the playback room’s "small room signature" cues. So we want to minimize the earliest in-room reflections. Incidentally recording studios spend tens of thousands of dollars to minimize early reflections while preserving the later-arriving ones, which imo is something that can largely be accomplished in a home audio setting by loudspeaker design and set-up.

If we can combine a spectrally-correct, relatively late-onset reflection field (neither too loud not too quiet) with time-intensity trading for the first-arrival sound, while minimizing the undesirable early reflections, we can get a wide sweet spot along with a "you are there" presentation.

This is a complex topic and these aren’t the ONLY things we need to get right, but they are some of the big things that imo matter.

If by any chance you will be at T.H.E. Show in Costa Mesa, California, in early June, the Infigo Audio room will be exhibiting speakers whose characteristics enable a "you are there" presentation with an unusually wide sweet spot (when set up correctly), all without requiring extensive room treatment in most cases.

Let me know if you have questions; I kinda shoehorned a lot of ideas into a few paragraphs, some of which may not be sufficiently clear.

Duke

Does "imaging" refer to precise, pinpoint location of instruments? 

The term seems general enough to also include, "include a wide or immersive soundstage" -- which might not mean the kind of precise, localized, and discrete images which people are discussing.

Or is "imaging" not used in this other way?

Borresen speakers. They do many, many things right and imaging is most definitely one of them.

@toddalin 

hear what imaging is all about.

Sure would be nice if we could see what components produce such imaging.  Please post your components and maybe room photos with your profile.  Thanks.,.

If I ever ready to stretch my audio spending, it would definitely be MBL101

OP    budget $20-30K

You can buy whole system in below (with all cables). It is the cleanest, the most realistic and only natural audio sound in the world. Ask your spouse about below sounds. Alex/WTA

WTA

I would definitely try to audition the Larsen 9, which are said to be great and well below your budget. The MBLs are excellent, but in the lower end (below the 101) don't have deep bass. The Larsens excel at bass and life-like soundstage.

Larsen 9 review / AbSound

IME, omnidirectionality hurts pin-point imaging by scattering the "image" around the room.

I purposely block the rear of my Heils to improve imaging and others have also reported that this aids their Heil's imaging too.

If you are in Orange County, So Cal, you are welcome to come over and hear what imaging is all about.