Speaker Imaging - Do you hear a line, or do you hear an arc??

pretty much what Eric [bdp24] said.
System: BiWired Spica TC-50 polyprop recap. Lead shot filled spiked stands. Speakers attach to stands w 4 Isolate It 50 Duro 0.25 x 2.25 circular pads. Kimber 2.5m BiFocal-XL. cd6006, passive LC1, passive XO1. 2x ML 800x w 10kg anti-skating.

Specifics:
Test discs never told me anything well recorded program couldn't tell better. Attend plenty of live acoustic music, get the image right for a well recorded large orchestra at full steam in a good hall and everything else is a doddle.

On a well set up system depth should approximate the space, be it hall or digital. It should draw you into the music as if you could walk up on stage.

An excellent set of a wide variety of well recorded material in good halls with a fairly consistent sonic is Louis Frémaux - The Complete Birmingham Years. Of course you have to like French music in English halls.

Note also, when a sound seems to be coming from farthest away, it’s pretty much always centrally located (center back).

IMO, this is a system failure. Back in the 90's, we did tests with 32bit digital processors, adding even or odd harmonics @ the CD 16bit bit 0 level. Even harmonics spread the backstage and push the image back, odd bring the image forward and triangulate it back to a point. The even push back can be solved by speaker placement, the odd triangulation cannot.

Other failings, mostly time coherence, cause the image to be too tall, tilted fore or aft.

IMO, a great many systems AT ANY PRICE are incapable of any semblance of correct imaging because their time coherence is non-existent.

Amen.

IMO, most HiFi haven't a clue as to what constitutes an accurate presentation. Lord knows that most shops are incapable of an accurate presentation.

As far as rack and TV, if they are covered and treated to be non-resonant, they do not seem to present much of a problem. IMO, the mains must be forward of the screen and rack

My system is very modest but sounds wonderful ... because of the room treatment and meticulous attention to the setup.

probably no need for "to me"

If only people would realize it's the room!

As a recording engineer, I mostly didn't give a rat's patoot about the hardware. The room however...

yes, but the listener does not move so all the room reflections are also time displaced. If one moves their seat, reflection times change as well.

IMO, this helps account for the popularity of the egregiously awful compact cassette among retrophiles. A head misalignment of 0.375 thou. introduces a channel time delay of 0.2ms

with a lot of recordings … the vocals are placed further back than the instruments

On pop records this is probably incorrect except for solo guitar, sax, etc.
On live opera, correct.

A fair number of LPs/CDs contain a photo of the group/orchestra playing while being recorded.
When listening to the recording, have you been able to correlated what you hear with what you see?

Only valid if the recording is mic'd stereo. If the session has several microphones, all bets are off there is any correlation, but some multi-mic sessions could be correctly panned and mixed to reflect player positions.

Mic-per-chair orchestra recordings don't usually image well and suffer the additional defect of 'strolling' wherein the perspective changes when a player or section is featured.