It is not so much the system that can do it most of the times, save for very bad designed audio system who will fail to do it, it is ACOUSTIC treatment and especially acoustic control that can create imaging to an optimal level not the gear by itself save at a lower extent level... Even my system could produce " some " imaging in my uncontrolled room few years ago......
Imaging is an acoustic phenomemon resulting from the coupling of the system and the room and their pressure zones distributions interactions...Location of speakers and sound level coordination all along the frequencies range is necessary...Timing of the reflected and direct frontwaves is also a main factor especially in the front/back axis......
if my 500 bucks system can do it in the right acoustic environment then ANY relatively good system can do it...You claim that only three can do it among all the others you listen to ONLY exemplify the general lack of acoustic knowledge... For sure some high end design system are more able than others this is not the question , but any good system can give a tremendous imaging in the right acoustically treated and controlled room...
Then your opinion resulted from lack in acoustic experience and experiments...An electronic equalizer is not an acoustical tuning room device, it is a very limited tool...And you will never get timbre experience right with this tool only...
Very few systems are capable of doing this.
You are wrong here also for the simple reason that timbre is an acoustic subjectively PERCEIVED phenomema, a very complex one integrating in its BODY a time envelope and spectral envelope reflecting ALSO all the acoustic conditions of the room where the timbre experience is recorded or listened to from an acoustical perspective and from choices and location and not only from the vibrating bodies quality of the violin ...
Simple....
Then imaging is very easy to create compared to timbre NATURALNESS ... The acoustic information related to many instruments interaction in space is more easy to retrieve than the complex resonating body of ONLY one and of each one of these instruments in a specific room...It is also a less complex information than the information related to the timbre of the instrument... The acoustic content of a voice is more complex than his location information in space...is it not evident?
A bad timbre of piano is a timbre but the difficulty is to have it right...The same for imaging but it is impossible to have timbre naturalness without imaging conditions with it, it is very possible to create imaging by using time and reflective timing in a room and not succeeding to create a NATURAL timbre for the piano... Why?
Read about timbre envelope perception...A cue?
a violin will sound with different timbre experience in a bad room ...Timbre experience incorporated not only the vibration of the sound source qualities but also we perveive this resonating body of the violin in a particular RESONATING room...
The imaging is the easiest to get right to a RELATIVE extent to begin with...Timbre is the last to get right and the more important acoustical cue and ruler to tune a room...
Of the three the image is most definitely the hardest to get right.