As we upgrade our audio systems, things (hopefully) keep sounding better and better. I have found that after a certain point, the system completely disappears. It’s no longer a pair of speakers, amps, preamps, sources, etc. Music is created out of thin air floating between and behind the speakers with little to no colorations in the sound. The regular audio verbiage can be thrown out the window because all you hear is the recording. If something is bright or harsh or bass heavy, it’s the recording not your system. I noticed this when I modified my source and preamp to accept better power supplies. Using a combination of linear power supplies and large SLA batteries took my system to a new level where the equipment just disappears. Of course, this wasn’t the only thing that helped. Up to that point, every component has been experimented on to achieve a high degree of synergy. Interconnects, power cables, speaker cables, etc. all play a role too. Everything matters.
My question to you all is when did this happen in your system? Did it develop slowly over time or was there a definite change that occurred with a certain upgrade?
Every system I've owned over the last 50 years from my KLH Model 20 to everything since has utterly disappeared when playing great music combined with my doing some "active listening." No room treatment other than whatever's in the room, no voodoo based special junk science tweaks...just good cables and the best sounding audio items I can find and afford set up properly...if a component calls attention to itself and doesn't sound like I think it should, out it goes.
@asctim The elephant in the room has always been crosstalk interference between left and right speakers which, despite our best efforts to upgrade everything else in the audio chain, results in stereo sounding “canned”. Since 2016 I have also eliminated the crosstalk interference by means of a computer program created by people way smarter than me. It electronically substitutes for the physical barrier that you currently use. I too had to compensate for the EQ anomalies. My listening position is very near field. The speakers are placed close to each other directly in front of me and well away from adjacent walls to reduce room effects. The room itself is about 65% dead. Additionally, I have recreated music-venue ambience with modified vintage gear and additional speakers. The learning curve of this audio listening paradigm has been gradual but really satisfying. Because of the commitment and study involved, it’s not for most people. But for me it’s truly magical when I turn out the lights at night and experience musicians expressing their art in full glory (amazingly from recordings!). So for me, the speakers disappeared over a period of a couple of years starting in 2016. It was the result of a lot of intellectual expenditure and experimentation rather than buying pieces of gear, a labor of love for sure.
After my divorce....only kidding. I am still a work in progress but moving forward with my mid hifi rig.My next step is upgrading my integrated amplifier to get the most out of my Yamaha CD-S2100 player, which I am pretty darn happy with. The DAC is quite good too.
I'm happy to not have anything heavy that I have to lift or shuffle around anymore, although I do still have a Lexicon amp which I would like to get rid of. The 75 pound ATI amp is gone, the Bryston monos are gone, the KEF ref 3's are gone, the NAD silver preamp is gone as is the Anthem preamp and a set of B&W bookshelf speakers. Now I have SONOS in 8 rooms consisting of a pair of delightful Moves, three old amps driving a set of KEF LS-50s in Studio A, an old set of DCM's in the master bath, and a pair of B&W bookshelves in the wife's office, a pair or 5's in the kitchen, another pair of LS-50's in the master driven by a new amp and a Martin Logan sub, a Port in the den running into the Lexicon driving a pair of old B&W bookshelves and a couple of REL subs, and a beam and sub and pair of 1's in the wife's bedroom. There's about 10 grand in wires wherever wires are required. I move the Moves to wherever I want music such as fill-in in the kitchen, the garage , Studio B or Studio X. I can control everything easily with any device that I have in front of me, and I have music everywhere. I even ran the Moves on a recent video shoot on the street. Check out one of my Insta pages @discoballguy. So the next time you ask about disappearances, look no further than toward me, the Invisible Man- or am I?
1. First day there I removed the carpet in the master bedroom which extended into the closet. There was a file cabinet bolted into the floor. It was a heavy file cabinet and the estate had left keys for me. But to get to the bolts I had to remove the lower drawer but decided I would first look for potential ‘treasure’ underneath the drawer. I reached in and felt a cloth sack. It was heavy...like a gun. I opened the sack and found a perfect...I mean exquisite German Luger. It looked like it had never been used. I don’t like or own guns...but damn this thing was special and impressive. There were ammo cartridges and a large container of loose change. I called my real estate agent and returned the gun to the estate. A year later when I told the story to my girlfriend, she immediate accused them of being Nazis. 2. The next week after finding the gun, I set up the stereo. I sat in the living room listening on a low lounge chair and looked at the kitchen to see that there was a 1/4” x 3” slot in the base moulding of a cabinet. I went to the kitchen and saw that the slotted moulding extended to the corner of the cabinet. At the corner of the moulding was a ring pull. I pulled the ring and the entire corner with slot neatly slid off...allowing a tiny spring-hinged door to immediately flip down. This door had a small mirror glued to its back that now reflected two LED lights pulsing from inside the kitchen cabinet. I opened the cabinet doors and removed the shelf paper to find another compartment. Inside was a motion detector. The kitchen cabinet lined up with the doorway to the hall which led to all the bedrooms. If an intruder broke the beam...an alarm would activate.
3.My girlfriend did not like the wallpaper in the bedroom. So we hired a company to remove all the wallpaper in the house. After an hour or two, I decided check in on the progress. The guy taking the wallpaper down looked at me a little sheepishly. Behind him and across 4 of the walls were Nazi swastikas and strange runes or symbols. They were written in white primer. They had used primer to treat the walls surfaces where the wallpaper seams met and used the excess to paint runes and swastikas.
Years later I learned from my next door neighbor that my house was the middle of the 3 homes occupied by German families. He had stumbled onto bomb shelter while gardening in his back yard. The concrete ceiling was 4’ thick. It had a fold down mattress and an air pump for oxygen. The husband was actually a rocket scientist who worked for Rocketdyne. He probably left Germany after the war. He had done some other interesting things to the house. But It was a fortress. I got locked out once. It took a once cocky locksmith almost 2 hours to get me back in.
"Active Listening" is what audio geeks and perhaps some music fans do...you're present, attentive, and listening closely to the whole damn thing...and if it's good you simply don't think about the gear unless something about the rig just sucks, it catches fire, or the owners of the place come home and you have to get the hell out of there.
“Active listening” is the whole point of the speakers disappearing no matter how good (or bad) your rig is. What you bring to a listening session is the determining factor.
When I was 15 my system unfortunately disappeared when someone broke into our house and stole the whole rig. This later turned out to be a blessing when my dad gave me some money from homeowners insurance and purchased a better system and my first Thoren's TT a TD-160c. My current system disappeared when I made custom cabinets for my speaker's with better interior insulation, upgraded the XO cap's.
My system in college LITERALLY disappeared..... it got STOLEN! It was a blessing in disguise though..... it was all JVC Japanese mid-fi (1984), and this event forced me to seek out a high end audio store that introduced me to NAD and Boston Acoustics.... great intro gear for a college student. I still have that NAD 3150 integrated!
My system is high end but the speakers are always present. The sound based on the OP has the sound disappear but I have found that there is an identifiable speaker location for many recordings. Sure, mono recordings can fill the room from wall to wall without an identifiable speaker but stereo is more problematic, particularly early stereo and Van Gelder jazz recordings. I blame my speakers the most as they are 25+ year old big box dynamic type (Legacy Focus). I wouldn't trade my sound for 99% of the audio systems because the sound is more than just open, it is alive, not SOTA I've heard that can eliminate anything between the source and the listener, but sufficiently close. I used to own many electrostats and sitting in one seat without turning my head, I often had the speakers disappear but at what cost? My Legacy Signature IIIs disappear more often due to their rear ambiance tweeter. My next speaker will be a high end Von Schweikert which also has an array of rear drivers to make the speakers disappear
I’ve had a few wow moments, starting when I upgraded my power amp, again when I upgraded the speakers. Initially I deliberately left them I spiked on the hardwood floor while I took some time to experiment with placement, and once I’d decided on that, it happened again when I installed the spikes/floor protectors. Part of the wow-factor has been the surprise at each step, because I didn’t expect to experience the level of improvement. It’s hard to type, still chuckling at @testpilot that was a great post after all the serious recitations prior. I’ve been through that, and coming home to an empty house when I was ‘relieved’ of my system in the mid 80’s. No great loss there though.
About 2005 I got tired of looking at 1,500 LP in addition to
C-90 tapes, CDs and DVDs. It made my
listening room more of a warehouse than a home.
My tape players were beyond repair.
AM/FM has become a wasteland, exit my Carver tuner.
It was time to digitize everything. I now have two Oppo optical drives and now
access about 30Tb of movies or 2Tb of music from 3 NAS that mirror one
another. Life is simpler and choices quicker
to execute. No more take out and put
away/refile.
I still have all the original CDs and DVDs as proof of
ownership. I believe it would be wrong
to rip a disk and then sell it. If I
sold a disk I believe I would lose all digital rights.
Speakers are Magnepan 3.7i and about 6’ 4” and five feet
away from the back wall. Often people
will be in the room for some considerable time before they ask me: “Are those
speakers?” They are hidden in planar
sight.
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