(snipped) innocent audiophiles believe that all audio components
exhibit varying
degrees of soundstaging, front-to-back depth, That it isn't so, except
in the case of loudspeakers, is a fact calmly accepted by professional
engineers

I had this very argument last night - I argued that the sound engineer
simply mixed the mics so their levels and the instruments they
represented were further up or down in the mix. I argued that in A-B
ing componants one should listen for verifyable quantities like timbre
(does it accurately represent the original, particularly in respect of
acoustic instruments) and resolution (is this low level detail present
or absent), and not soundstaging. I was met by a counter argument that
the engineer deliberately created depth and perspective by the use of
echo, reverb and other factors so that the soundstaging was in the
recording itself, and that when A-B'ing componants one should listen to
spacial information - where is the 'back wall', where is the 'mid
field' and where is the 'foreground' . i argued that by pushing a pair
of speakers right up to the wall or pulling them out into the centre of
the room (and other variations) you would totally alter the soundstage,
though this would have little effect on timbre or resolution except for
the bass response. We left it there. Andy