Which headphones have the best stereo imaging? Do the Sony MDR-V6s have good stereo imaging?

If you mean soundstaging, this is a very arguable area. Most people have their own favorite and there is more to soundstaging than just the headphone. Some of the more well known cans for this would be Sony CD3000, Sennheiser HD650/600/580/590, Audio Technica A900, some of the higher end Grados and the list goes on... The thing is though, that it is very arguable that your source has as much affect here as your headphones. Driving your headphones with the proper amp is also extreamly important. An underpowered HD600 doesn't have the soundstage that it does when powered correctly. Having good clean power also makes a difference as do the cables you use.

Soundstage/imaging is one of the inherent weakness of the headphone experience. That's the problem with having two separate channels strapped to your head in isolation, unlike speaker listening which allows a natural blending of left and right channels in the the air/space between you and the speaker fronts.

To address this, some people like headphone amps with a circuit called "crossfeed" that blends the left and right channels to a small degree to help simulate natural x-feed that occurs in space with speakers. Not everyone likes x-feed, there are a number of trade-offs if it's used. Do a search on "crossfeed" and you'll find threads addressing this.

Headphones with angled drivers (Sony CD3000, some Audio-Technica cans) can also help with imaging/soundstage. I also find that certain closed cans (the Sonys and A-Ts) are better at soundstaging. Do a search on "soundstaging" its been discussed ad nauseum.

Im pretty sure sound staging and stereo imaging are two different things. Stereo imaging is good for games, while sound staging is good for listenining to music.

every now and then you'll come accross a statement like, "what sounded like one instrument was actually two". That's imaging; being able to deliniate and differentiate between instruments; to be able to hear two notes at the same time instead of one.

1. AKG K-1000
2. Anything else

Imaging, soundstage, I think maybe some of you are reading too much into the post. I think he just wants something suitable for games. Sound localization maybe. Basically the very simple need of knowing where a footstep or gunshot comes from, and you don't need a natural sounding headphone to do it. In fact that is the only way I can assume headphones like the HD570 ever got recommended for *anything* was because of gaming. Perhaps the AKG1000's might reproduce a gunshot with startling realism, but realistically if you heard a gunshot fired at you from cover I doubt you would know precisely where it came from. In a game you only need to really know how loud it is and to what degree it is panned to the left or right. And since the V6 are studio phones that are used for perhaps mixing and the like, it could very well be suitable for gaming. And frag gamers are looking for more of a "enhanced" supernatural prowess representation of things as opposed to realistic.