Waiting to get into *Blues and Barbecue festival on Manhattan's waterfront. I think we sometimes use terms imprecicely. Imaging, layering, and soundstage (headstage) would mean different things to me. I'd take imaging to be placement across a "stage", so that, say, the singer is getting and center, the guitar is off to the right. Layering would flesh our the 3D more, so the bass may be to the left but behind the singer and guitar, with the finger left of center and even further back. Soundsta,ge I'd take (and others may differ here, this is where I think most controversy lies) to mean both the sense of space or "air" between instruments, and the sense of the size/shape of the space (how far back the side and back walls are, etc). I find all of the above are clear, easy to appreciate, and see more realistic as the great improves, with the exception of venue size. This I find easier to discern with speakers, headphones give me some sense of scale, but the diagrams people sometimes draw with detailed size and shape of venue I'd beyond me. Maybe it's high frequency hearing loss of age, maybe a lack of some sort of imagination on my part.
