The Disappearing Act

All starts with recording engineers who understand microphones, positioning of players and their mics, room acoustics and a myriad of other contributory elements.

Each step contributes and the masters understand that.  Rudy Van Gelder studios had this dialed in.  Recordings several decades old hold their own today.

Bernie Grundman picked up and carried the torch.  I’ve blindly picked off his mastering work for decades.  I think he is the best currently.

Santana Abraxas Blu-Spec CD2 version first cut disappears.  Mickey Hart Däfos disappears.  Several Three Blind Mice recordings disappear.

It can never be live, but the facsimile of performance can be breathtaking when source is teamed with top reproduction equipment.  Good hunting.

@barts ....I remember reading a 'plaint from a gamer that his desktop speakers never gave him the audible 'clue' that he was being snuck up upon....found a pair that did so enough to notice the 'cue' and respond (...in time, perhaps...*L* )

Headphones simply take out your space, replaced with theirs'; the better ones' more convincingly.  

As an omni fan, they can pull off the suspension act with less fuss in 2 chan, but adding a pair for an audio 'back wall' creates a larger version,

It's nice. ;)

For my system, it's everything and anything I play, whether its LP's on either of two turntables or digital music through streaming services or my own library. 

The effect is there due to the room acoustics and speaker placement. It's incredible, and the only variation is with the dimensions of the soundstage. With digital, it's pretty much a fixed presentation. With analog, it can vary depending upon choices of cartridge and phono amp settings, though never is it "connected to the speakers."

For my current system, I knew my speakers were known to be able to achieve disappearance. But after being broken in, they did not. So there was a period of six months of slowly repositioning them until they were optimal. Then suddenly they were gone. But it does vary. There are some albums... like some of the silly recordings when one musician is recorded directly in the left speaker and one in the right... dual mono... I don't know what they were thinking. Those do not disappear.

@lalitk - there were increasing levels of disappearance over the course of building my system, but the biggest jumps happened with 1.open baffle speakers with their field coil drivers; 2.combination of replacing the fuse of the external power supply for my preamp with a graphene coated sluggo and running the Inakustik 4004 power cable to it; 3.addition of taiko extreme with switch and router; 4.addition of omni-directional elac 4pi tweeters; 5.configuring a nearfield listening position.
Not necessarily in that order. Even with recordings that ghdprentice understandably refers to as silly - there is that sense of depth to everything I put on.

in friendship - kevin