What Does Holographic Sound Like?

Sabai:
The conversation seems to have taken a decidely interesting turn, and it's months since this thread started.
I am unclear why it has not been stated that a holographic presentation is an inherent property of the component itself. A Philips 1000 SACD player is not holographic: a JVC ZL-Z1010TN player is much more so. My Convergent SL-1 was holographic: My First Sound Deluxe Presence MK II was more so (and of course, each accompanying component must first reflect the designers' intent when designing their components). Any version of the Wilson Audio Tiny Tots will be enormously holographic, but then, so was the ARC SP-11 preamp and the Rowland Coherence pre amp, as well as the Rowland Model 5 amp with MIT cabling throughout. This was all circa 1988-1996 (among the setups I had at the time, although I had multiple amps, preamps, speaker systems).
It is not necessary to create - nor desirable - to create a holographic setup one piece at a time. If you wish that as an end result, simply buy components that are known for their holography (aka "imaging) characteristics. Separate from this is "focus" which is similar to having a 35mm camera with a lens that is slightly out of focus, and then you turn the barrel of the lens a micrometer to the point where you can see the flecks in the eye. Imaging (holography) and focus are not the same. You can have a diffused - but holographic - picture on the orchestra, or a "focused" but flattened image (the opposite of holographic. Think of a birthday ballon fully inflated, and one that is, after 12 hours, losing air, and a bit more deflated. Deflated = less holographic: fully inflated = holographic).
If you wanted an integrated amp that has both dimensionality and intense focus, borrow any of NAD's BEE series integrated: they have both characteristics. They will NOT have great high frequency extension and the first BEE model is a bit thick in the mid bass, but then, a midbass with a little extra "fat" on it will usually give you more holography than a midbass that is "lean" (again, think Kate Moss vs. Cindy Crawford as a visualization. Cindy is obviously more holographic). The midbass is highly responsible for a very "physical" presentation, aka "holographic. Without it, you will have less 3-D in the double bass (which lives a great deal in the mid bass) or cello or nearly any instrument.
Accompanying those frequencies, the upper bass and lower midrange also contribute to the 3-D presentation. In professional reviewers circles, this is also known as 'tone color." It will be rare that you have a tonal palette that is thin and washed out (more common among solid-state than among tubes) and yet have the 3-D effect (you CAN have it, but it will not be as vivid, since tubes are more, shall we say, "colorful"). If that is confusing, think of a red shirt: brand new, it has great richness of color (aka "tonal color"): after 50 washings, it has become a pastel color, a mere shade of itself so to speak, and therefore much less rich, or to use another term, a "thinning out" of the original rich shade.
So, back to components: thin tonal color = less 3-D: rich tonal color (particularly in the mid bass) = MORE 3-D.
I wouldn't be looking for my interconnects and speaker cables and power cords to GIVE me the 3-D presentation, as much as I would not want them to DETRACT from it, if it is on the recording (Mercury Living Presence CDs are famous for their 3-D presentation): low-level (quiet sounds: score pages being turned, player exhaling while playing an instrument or just sitting there) capabilities and great dynamic range. And highly dimensional (aka, holographic/ imaging/ 3-D).

Since you asked about "holographic," this is a component thing, NOT an accessory thing, speaking only in the sense of how to assemble a system. One buys the car with the traits one values FIRST: 0-60 in 6 seconds, turns on a dime, great suspension system, quiet on the highway with a minimum of "road noise (where you hear the sound of the tires upon the road. The tires themselves are secondary (some will disagree, of course), as is the radio, the air conditioning, etc. The point is that a Volvo and an Audi will have different inherent traits, which is the reason you prefer one over the other. You haven't listed your components, by the way. That would help you reach your goal. Please list them, so those of us who know them might suggest an alternative that is more "holographic." (Of course, all your components may already BE holographic, but if you don't list them, there is no way to know that your choices are helping you accomplish your goal.) If you have listed them elsewhere, then, please excuse my suggestion. I did not see any thread you have cooperated in other than this one.

I hope this is assistive to you.

I have found the room to be the biggest contributor to sound, Sabai. Even an untreated 13 x 27' room, with many openings (a la Spanish architecture) allows the sound to move into other areas of a house without hitting boundaries, as I found out for myself when I set up my former boyfriend's speakers when I was out visting him years ago in the SF Bay Area, and he'd not returned from France yet. (Finally, I was alone to re-arrange the system without his low-fi interference. Long story.)
He had two rooms with no barriers between them: the dining level and a sunken living room (hence the 13x27" room, and the speakers were placed in the sunken area, with their back right up against the dining room higher area (Inever liked that placement: I thought sound waves would slam into each other immediately, and the sound was, corresponding boring. But it was his house). I looked at them, and thought hmmm, based on my experiences (and my work: writing for TAS, and then Fi Magazines), it would be better if the speakers were up on the higherlevel (the dining room, all of 24" higher. Again, dining room dimentions: 13' wide x 9'long - exactly 1/3 of the length of the whole room)(the sunken living room was 13' wide and 18' long, hence the total of 13 x 27'), so I moved them there. The change was immediately and completely positive: transients came alive (no glare) and the subtle nuances of sound revealed themselves. You could hear two fiolinists playing side by side and hear which direction their instruments were pointed). My ex had two boarders in the house, a woman and a man, who were in their room just at the top of the stairs, which is only on a level 9' higher then the dining room level where I'd placed the speakers. When I walked upstairs a few minutes later, Marianne, the woman, asked me "What did you do?" and I told her I'd just lifted the speakers from the sunken living room up on to the dining level (all of 2 steps, when you step down from the dining level to the living room area. She pronounced the sound "wonderful," and I hadn't even seriously tried to place them, width-wise. The only thing I did notice was that it it turned out that the speakers were 1/3 of the way from the dining room wall (9' and the room is 27' (rule of thirds here), but the speakers were less than 2 feet from the side wall on one side (heh, the house ended on that side: nowhere to go), while on the other side, it has the two spanish arches with no doorways with the front door and hallway immediately on the other side of the arches (again, NO DOORS). My best friend, who'd lived with me when I had WATT/Puppies, Versa Dynamic 2.d, MIT CVT Terminator, a JVC XLZ-1050 player and a Convergent preamp, Jadis Defy 7, VTL 300s and Plinius SA-250 amps - oh and the VAC 70/70 all with Transparent reference level speaker cable (circa 1995), shen I dragged her over, raving about the sound, said, "Oh, my God, Glen. I've heard your system sound GOOD, but this is a different level!!!). OF course, I neglected to note I'd just discovered Shunyata power cords, so I had a Black Mamba and a King Cobra V2 sent to San Francisco, so I could hear it while out there on someone else's system, and Jack Bybees first line conditioner and an ESP power cord powering Bybee's line contioner. The Shunyata went into the Arcam Alha 6 integrated My friends system, which I'd given him before I left California for lovely Connecticut, was a JVC 1050, an Arcam Alpha 6 integrated, MIT CVT w/Terminator, Transparent Plus speaker cable. He had a basic rack (Target, but not a sturdy rack), but with a level of sand bags, with MDF board on top with 3 GoldmundCones, another piece of MDF board and 3 MORE Goldmund cones, MAN, did we get imaging - AND focus. Oh, yes, the Speakers were the Mirage 490s, which the titanium tweeter. $600.00. HP reviewed the tweeter in the larger version, somewhere around TAS issue 84.

And the "holography/imaging" was stunning. Nancy Wilson CLEARLY outlined in space, singing "Free Again," off her Lush Life album. The bitterness in her voice was unmistable, the venemous bile made you recoil.
I point this out because I've been in several rooms, another one being Tom McFawl, the creator of the Meow, Meow cat commercials, who lives in Faifield, CT. His living room is easily 30 x45 - at the smallest (didn't have a yardstick) and he had Infinity speakers (non-descript ones), generic speaker cable in a nice, wood, walled room. Ceiling 10' or maybe 11. I bought over an Arcam FMJ -23 (with the Ring DAC) and Nordost Quattro Fils interconnects, and a Shunyata Python power cord. Other than the rug on the floor and the grand piano, there wasn't a shred of anything reflective - well, I guess those floor-to-ceiling lace curtains ofer the windows might've helped. But the room, I recall, didn't sound "live." That cold have been the bookcases along one wall.
You want life?!?! God, was it EVER alive. Every movement of the musicians, even down to their stomping on the floor, which disturbed Tom no end. "The Engineers should have edited that out," he screeched. My boyfriend and I made the point to him that it made the recording realistic in the sense of it sounding like real human beings playing their souls out.
He had NO sound-proofing of ANY kind,and the speakers weren't even on stands and were willy-nilly placed, one of e'm BEHING the piano. When the sound came out, I immedately thought, it's the size of the room. The room reflections are taking so long to reach the side walls, and ceilling, they reach the listener's ear LOOOOOONNNNG before any secondary relections.
His wiring was single end, but every bit as focused and holographic as when I heard Dave Wilson's WATT/Puppies in Novato in 1988 (Iwas the FIRST non-Wilson person to hear them.[Dave used to set up my Goldmund turntable for me]). And I kid you not, although the Wilsons had more resolution, they in NO WAY kicked Tom's Infinity speakers off the sonic stage.
People tweak everything, but how many know that if you put down a half-round 11" tube trap with the reflective side facing the speakers on the floor 6" away from the speakers and angling the traps so that they are not completely parallel to the front of the speakers (angle them slightly, so that if you measure one end, it would be 6 1/2" from the woofer (floorstandings: mine are Hale Rev 3s) and the other end around 7 1/2" away (usually the outer end of the trap is further away, as in the outside end of the speaker, closest to the side wall. I did that last night, and was disgusted I'd forgotten not to lay them perfectly parallel (ASC agrees, by the way). It brings back the lower mdrange frequency the Robert Green complained about in TAS about 6 issues ago when he said we were killing the lower midrange (sucking it out). I wrote Harley and said, use 1/2 round tube traps on the floor in front of the speakers and cure that suckout!
In any case, the size of the room surprasses most else (and the materials, too, of course: concrete? Yucky. ASC's wall damp - which I have - on a resilient channel - gives the wall the strength of a plaster wall ('course, it's not truly plaster), so flexing and bass loss are minimized.
Nonetheless, my upstairs listeing room is 13x20 with an 8' ceiling that suddenly goes up to 10' in the new addition (2003)part of the house.
For all that, the 23' x 43' basement (it's a small ranch), was THE most holographic presentation of the sound I've ever heard, and makes the ASL Hurricanes sound as they did in HP's review back in TAS' March 2003 issue. Upstairs in the smaller room, not quite the vivid, sheer, holy-good-it-sounds-live sound, although the imaging is better in the smaller room.
I cannot speak to multiple runs of wiring, but neither Dave Wilson, nor Alon Wolff use this approach, and certainly not the eminent Hary Pearson (and Ive heard his system, as well as Larry Kay,my former boss at Fi Magazine, when Larry had Grand Slamms, Transparent (top of the line) Rockport turntable, Jadis JP-80 linestage, Bel amps and, hmmm...not sure of the interconnects: either MIT or Transparent. I liked the $300,000 system, but thought it not a match for my measly $25k system - and I KNOW what to listen for. 'Smatter of fact, I asked permission to make a change and then removed the power cord from lying on top of the Transparent reference speaker cable, which I elevated with a book so it was like a bridge going over the power cord on the floor. Sallie Reynolds, upon a replay of the cut, gasped, "What did you DO?!?" And Tom Miiller looked at me (we were writing an article about the Audio Artistry Dvorak speakers at the time, me doing the commentary on his main review) and said, "Showoff!" I protested that this came from Enid Lumley herself, and was not my idea. Also, turn off your microwaves, and no, I don't CARE that you have your stereo on a dedicated 20 amp circuit. Unless your circuit box is completely separate, TURN OFF THE MICROWAVE.
So, to wrap this up, i've had a LOT of experience with designers in their own factory listening rooms, and I'm here to tell you, the room comes FIRST. if you don't fix it, you may find yourelf compensating to create an effect that need not be so complicated, except for the room's interference. (I still remember after my review of the Hurricanes on Ultraaudio.com, someone wrote to ask if I didn't find the Hurricanes "smeared," and I thought "his room's off." They are, as HP said, excellent on attack and decay. If you hear smearing, it's something else, not them. I wish more people would get about 10 9"tube traps, stack them behind the speakers and put one each to the side (first reflection point) and then you'll hear how much NATURAL imaging your system has. You can improve from there, but you can't build the rooms in a house without floor plans and knowledge of your building material. That's a recipe for disappointment.

Sabai:
I'm going to, for the sake if argument, suggest that room treatment is the FIRST place to start, even before the components. (And let me tell you, I myself never started out that way: it took many years for me to realize the room counted so much, but then, I had good-sized rooms in all my apartments in San Francisco. Everything opened up into a larger space. If I knew then what I know now...wow, I coulda been in LOVE a lot earlier.)

So, lets say you have a component that is weak in, say, the lower midrange, and you have a room that ALSO sucks out the power range (100-400Hz), the logical step would be to buy a component that emphasizes the lower midrange. However, in this case, you are COMPENSATING with a component that is not neutral. Then, when you buy something that IS neutral, the problem re-materializes.
It is far better to do a room sweep before putting anything in the room. Add components, place the speakers where you think they should be, then do another room sweep. At this point, you have not purchased anything other than the components. The sweep will tell you where your problems are, but again, the bigger the room, the fewer the problems. This is not my personal knowledge: Alton Everest, in his "Master Handbook of Acoustics," states that "volumes smaller than 1500 cubic feet are so prone to sound coloration that they are impractical." I guess he would know, right?
But I do agree with you that room treatment, second only to room size (with caveats: asymmetrical walls, porous floors, etc.) are highly important. Trust me, I'm disappointed in the 13x20 room, in contrast to the 23 x 40'ish basement in the house. In the smaller room, the system sounds "great." In the basement (unfinished, or I'd be LIVING in that space: but it has no heat), the sound is completely different, bordering on an "aliveness" it never has upstairs. I reviewed the Genesis 6.1s in both rooms. Even with initial placement in the basement, the Gennies were so much clearer, it was disturbing. Room treatments can certainly help, but they cannot overcome the laws of physics. I find sidewalls more problematic than rear walls, since sound is omnidirectional at lower frequencies.
I, too, have used Shakti Hallographs, and they improve the sonics, but my basement, tons of boxes all over the place and all? Can't be beat for 3-D imaging. I will say dipolars work better in a smaller room than boxes, though.

Sabai:
I'd have to disagree with your statement. A room has nodes because of its dimensions. "Equipment" does not affect room nodes: the room itself has this, as water, in a container, has different weight, texture and movement than does milk, or wine or orange juice or any other liquid.
I understand the idea that components affect the sonics, but a suckout in the lower midrange is there regardless whether or not there is equipment in it. You can't HEAR it until you put components in it, but this is a bit like, "if a tree falls in the forest and no one hears it, does it make a sound?" (Of course it does: it has mass and density and coming into contact with something else with mass and density produces a result: sound. Whether or not someone is there to hear the sound does not change the reality, similar to if you clap your hands together and you're deaf, is there a sound? Obviously, but you cannot hear it because you lack the ability to hear sound. The sound is still there. So are the room nodes, but they don't come into play until someone steps into the room. Some of us forget that if we walk into a room and talk, the room nodes are activated. Components not needed, just sound waves. And you CAN treat a room for speech.An acoustic engineeer designs a hall without ever having an orchestra playing in it. The orchestra comes later. The room has the same nodes and can then be MODIFIED to sound better, but the room can be treated (sonically enhanced) long before a performance is given.