Speakers that can reveal orchestral instruments' positions

@gkr7007  
I recently heard the Spatial Audio M3 Sapphire speakers at the Florida Audio Expo and was stunned by the SQ for such an affordable speaker. They just seemed to get all the notes correct without any exaggeration of bass, mids or treble. Congrats on your X Series decision.

I recently upgraded my pre-amp and power amp to a used Anthem AVM 20 pre ($200) and classDaudio Studio power ($700).  These significantly improved the clarity of my 1989 Martin Logan CLS ii's, which I've had for 31 years.
I've purchased two used Anthem AVM 20's for $200 and $300 (new they were $4,000).  I'm using the "2 Ch z Anlg-DSP Main" and "All chan Stereo" playback mode on the Anthem.

I'm streaming all music from a Dell pc, using VLC for audio playback.  I'm also using commercial xlr interconnect cables.
By improved clarity, I'm hearing much more of the backing musicians in performances and improved sound stage in better recordings.  I recently got a "City of Prague Philharmonic Orchestra" recording "the essential James Bond".  Yeah, but it is the best orchestra recording I've found yet.  Stunning performance, dynamic audio, no spot mics, and the fullest soundstage I've heard.  Even the original movie soundtracks sound compressed compared to this recording.
Re-listening everything I've got, I find even mundane pop/rock hits from the 60's/70's with stunning audio quality, composition, and performances.  Songs with "spacing" that allow you to hear the details of the performance.

The Dramatics "What you see is what you get"
The Undisputed Truth "Smiling Faces Sometimes Don't Tell the Truth"Friends of Distinction "Grazing In The Grass"
Herb Albert "A Taste of Honey"Carly Simon "The Right Thing To Do"Peter, Paul and Mary "A'soalin","Gone The Rainbow", "Bamboo", "Sorrow", "500 Miles"Mamas & Papas "Go Where You Wanna Go"
Speaker placement for my CLS's has been the 1/3  rule at most places.  Speakers 1/3 distance from front wall, listening position 1/3 from back wall.  CLS's separation about the same as the distance from CLS's to listening position.
Just a thought.

Keep trying to get a live concert in your listening room, good luck with that, other that that do what janewyman suggested & drop some acid.

First, two speakers cannot image "height". You have two variables, when the sound arrives at each each, and how loud the sound is for each air. There is no way to derive "height" from that, so don’t bother trying .... though you may convince yourself it is there and/or your room acoustics may give an impression based on inconsistent frequency response w.r.t. direction (which is not a good thing).

I get a good laugh when I read people saying they made some minor change and the "soundstage doubled", or some other superlative. As pointed out, most of the soundstage is in the recording, so it comes down to how it is recorded and mixed. Remember, only two variables w.r.t. imaging, when the music gets to each ear, and relative volume.

After that, it is a complex interaction of your speakers and room. If either one is bad, you lose your imaging. On the speaker front, it comes down to the same things always discussed, smooth on-axis frequency response, and smooth decaying off-axis response. If you don’t have smooth on-axis and smooth decaying off axis response, then the volume balance between instruments gets messed up due to frequency response variations. So when you do research, look for products that either publish good on/off axis frequency response and/or where you can find tests on the web. "Trust your ears" it not always the best advice. Speakers will sound much different at home versus in a demo room. You are listening to the room as much as the speakers, and a purpose built demo room can hide problems that you may not be able to avoid at home.

If you aren’t willing to work on room treatments, then forget about good imaging. This comes back to timing. If you have strong reflections, your brain doesn’t know what arrived first and it needs to be able to clearly identify the same signal reaching both ears. This also plays into the importance of smoothly decaying off-axis frequency response. First reflections and strong reflections are all bad. Side walls in front of the speaker, behind the speaker, and often forgotten is behind the listener, but also the floor and the ceiling. You don’t want to eliminate all reflections as then you loose that nice artificial sense of "space".

Actually, speakers image height real well unless you have system issues OR you system is not optimized, I.e, isolated, etc. Everybody should know by now there are three physical dimensions involved, depth, width and height, let’s call them x, y and z, that are captured on a recording. The more resolved a system becomes the more apparent all the various dimensions of the soundstage become, including height. A lot of the spatial information contained on the recording, or at least should be contained, involves first and second reflection, reverberant decay, echo, and similar acoustic parameters. Space and time, that’s a total of four dimensions. 🤗