Well, first of all, I hope you don't take my previous post as arguing with you about your impressions, only with your expectations -- I understand what you are saying, and yes, I agree, from what I am saying, I would say, stay away from omnis. I am by no means defending the MBLs -- if what is important to you is soundstaging and imaging, and they don't excel at that, then they are definitely not for you. I also still appreciate the impressions -- I know how to read impressions, even negative ones, to see if there is still something I'm interested in. I am the target market for omnis, and even at US$70K, I still wouldn't expect them to excel at imaging (except in maybe the scenario grawk gives, or perhaps in an acoustically soundproofed room [i forget what they're called]), but then, that's not important to me, which is why I asked about midrange and so on.
grawk -- I understand what you're saying, but I was speaking in generalities. I'm sure you could come up with a few isolated examples of rooms and/or recordings that they might excel at, but I stand by my disagreement -- most recordings with any sense of soundstage were done with directional mics (e.g. Mapletree, Weavers at Carnegie Hall, etc.). Ears are directional...ish (more like a cardioid mic than anything else, I think), so recording something with an omni mic I would think would be too much information (especially in terms of reflections), but if one had a surround mic, or...have you heard those recordings that Kimber has started doing, yet? I haven't, but I heard they image superbly. I think that might yield a more realistic soundstage.