Quote Originally Posted by Sir Terrence the Terrible
Joe, imaging is imaging. If the instruments occupy a certain place within the mix that can easily be discerned, it is imaging. Whether it is panned in place or recorded acoustically with a phased or time arrival offset to the microphone it is called imaging.

Since this recording that you mention has not been repurposed for multichannel, you don't really know that imaging would be ruined by the process. No one would really know until it is done. I have done many recordings where I have panned voices into position, and you would never know I did it. It is about the quality and attention to detail, not about the technology per say. Any engineer worth his salt can pan a voice or instrument into place without sounding artifical.
All the panning in the world can only do one thing. Move the apparant position from left to right. Imaging is much more than that. If you don't want to listen to Jacintha I recommend almost any Chesky title. Imaging is demonstrated quite well in their recordings. Without depth you have nothing more than cardboard cut outs in a flat plane. With my rig it is quite easy to tell when an image has been panned into position. A prime example of this is a Natalie Cole recording I have where I get a mental picture of her in a sound isolation booth holding headphones to one ear and singing into a mike with a pop guard. Incidentally one of the reasons direct to disc recordings are so popular with us old guys is because of the imaging. With direct to disc there can be no mixing or processing after the recording.