For reference and perspective I am a trained musician who supposedly knows how to listen for music as it happens in live settings all of which depends on electronic reproduction to be heard. Listening to music is a solely singular experience of the mind. And mine just expanded. How? Well, friends, I just bumbled into the BIG change in the recordings of everything to which I listen, regardless of signal source origination, by the need for replacement of “failing” gain stage tubes.
Four 6922 tube (variant) “rolled” into my pre-amp amp stages of “ how to copy a copy of a recorded performance of “best take” recordings “mastered” by a human listening to and live time self adjusting” to the actual MUSIC often layered one performance at a time ( see Boston) and not (as it appears to have been) originally co-performed and co-recorded in “real time”. Music is now a process of limiting variability of quality best suited to the end of the chain reproduction equipment capacity to best replicate the original. A desired result with too many variables to contemplate while the recording is being performed. I just play the part. Written by the song writer. Or arranger. After that the performance is at the whim of industry, not me. Back to my point:
Those tubes (manufactured in one batch from 1976 ( hand made variances included at no extra cost) have opened and widened perceptive nuances of the sounds transferred to tiny electric codes magically appearing where they were not discernible by my ears prior to the new (old) better(?) tubes were installed. Or at least, so it appears to my ears! BTW I am all digital all the time. Conclusion: you are listening to a highly processed copy of actual music that is just that….a copy! because I am also a pro musician and can report that from an actual on stage performance centered perspective, there is no “image” effect. If such is possible from the audience perspective it is probably due to the efforts of a good sound person. Just like the person at the helm of the replication being copied to recorded formats currently known to man. Recordings are replications of captured information. The after effect reproduction contraptions we utilize to create the reproduction of the performance of the original. Waiting for rediscovery hidden in the old stock original 6922. Who knew? YMMV.