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?
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.
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.
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
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!
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.
“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.
"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.
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.
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?
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.
@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.
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.
My system disappeared about two decades ago. The walls, floor, ceiling went away and I had a sound stage with instrumental and performer appearances on a giant stage that depending on recording was somewhere in the first 10 rows or so. After that we are just playing with tonality tweaks.... I’ll probably never have the definition to "see" saliva roll off tonsils but I have it from the lips and tongue on a few of the higher resolution recordings. 25 year system build including full room treatment.
I've really only heard the disappearing effect to a highly convincing level by using a divider plate to eliminate stereo cross talk, sitting fairly close to the speakers and far from the walls, and then some EQ to fix the response issues caused by the divider plate, and then a recording that has some coherent ambient information in it, which usually means NOT a studio mix of any kind. It didn't require high end equipment. Just a highly inconvenient listening setup. Getting the EQ right was extremely important to creating the illusion for me.I also used absorption above and to the sides of the speakers to minimize wall reflections. Really a PITA, but I've never heard anything more convincing from megabuck systems. Crosstalk is the great spoiler in my mind, bringing great systems down a long, long way and making them sound essentially similarly wrong to much, much less expensive systems in terms of imaging. At least that's how my ears react. So I don't pay as much attention to imaging depth and pay attention mostly to clarity and good tonality, low distortion, smooth dispersion and response. I expect a speaker system to reveal itself sonically like a good work of art does visually, with it's frame clearly visible, but also give me a very good insight into the musical performance, which is plenty challenging but at least it's possible without getting into a very constrained listening position.
high-amp - sorry man and hope this schtuff get us back to normal(?) soon and you can re-build .
I dodged losing my first system due to divorce in '91. She brought in one of my dealers to appraise the system and I ended up giving her the house and a car. Got rid of her , house, and a car I detested all at the same time. Deal ? Hell yes...
To the questions at hand from the OP, My system disappeared when I bought my dream house, my bachelor palace in 2005 and was able to set up my best music room ever. It has further deepened in absence with recent equipment, iC & speaker tweaks .
I find myself fading out right along with it more regularly with the current shut-in situation.
Stay Home - Stay Healthy - Stay Connected ....and Happy Listening my friends !
Slowly over the past couple of weeks, through on-line sale(s). With no employment for the last month and no light at the end of the tunnel due to CV-19, I needed the cash to pay the bills! UGH
It first happened when I went from my (Shure V-15) Crown IC150, and Phase Linear 400 driven stacked Advents to Audire electronics, (Supex 900 Mark IV cartridge), driven B&W's, followed by gradual enhancements over the decades with upgrades of the same brands (Or designer). Another interesting change was my 25 years with electrostsatics, while never selling my old B&W's, then replacing both with newer B&W's. Old B&W's now on TV. 'Stats gone!
Thorens TD318, Stanton 881s VanAlstine Super PAS 3 with GE Milspec tubes Heathkit W4m monoblocks (serviced not restored) NEAR 10M speakers
Miles Davis 4 and More / My Funny Valentine Ella Fitzgerald- various Verve LPs- all mono.
With the lights out the sonic image was holographic. I was not aware of the confines of the speaker boxes, or the spatial limits of the room in which I sat.
I felt I was in the audience back in 1964 experiencing Miles in person.
Ella was in the room, front and center. Sure it was mono, but I heard depth and air. The back edge of the band seemed to recede into the horizon.
Late 1997.
In the present, I can tell when my system is dialed in by how much I don't hear the physical placement of my speakers. I can close my eyes and be enveloped in sound that exists free of the dimensions of my speakers. Speaker quality and placement is key (of course) but quality of system components also affects the ability to disappear.
The first time I clearly heard "height" as a distinct component of a central image was after changing to an ARC SP10-MK2. I could follow the path of a trumpet horn as the musician moved around. I could hear the relative position of a trumpet bell and then hear the different position of the bell of a saxophone during solos.
I always felt like it dissapeared a long time ago with tubes and Quad ESLs. However, it truly disappeared when I changed my 12" Jelco 750 tonearm for the newer 850. New turntable bearing and bulk foil resistors in the phono amp finished the job.
My system does the disappearing act more often since I've replaced the input tubes in my pre with nos Mullards.The room treatments along with getting the bass dialed in was the biggest step forward in being able to hear that illusion.
I had a similar experience in college when some bikers broke into my apartment and stole a couple grand worth of equipment; this was in 1973, so in today’s money, it would be nearly $12K!
The day my stereo finally disappeared? Oh I remember it just like yesterday. It was the morning of July 5th, 1978. Very late the night before, I’d steered Lurch, my cancer-pocked yellow Impala with the monkey brown potato-chip vinyl top to a crunching stop outside my crappy rental in Montrose; straight ahead you could see the long row of shotgun shacks start right where Houston’s fourth ward began, on the next block. Ok, it was kind of a wild night partying with my new girlfriend Faith, slightly my senior, at her fancy condo in the nicer Memorial neighborhood, but it was time to get home. I do remember tossing the keys onto the dining room table, as I made my way to flop face down on the bed, lights out.
Morning: "tunes" was my first thought; I got upright and stumbled toward the stereo, squinting just enough not to trip, and reached to flip the switch on that receiver. Just stood there, wagging my index finger in the air, up and down, not finding it. I had to open my eyes, even if it hurt. Damn, where was my stereo? Gone it was, along with the Cerwin Vega garage sale speakers and the Dual 1219 turntable and even the Allman Brothers At Fillmore East, which I’d left on it. Linda the neighbor showed up, and gave me the deadpan look. "Well you didn’t even lock the door. I just walked right in." Yeah, I could see that now. "That’s a shame, Chuck. Let’s go get some eggs, you’ll feel better." "Okay, I’ll drive".
Dressed now, but where are those keys. I know I threw them right about here! Well, maybe I left them in the car. Halfway down the front walk - "Hey, he took the car too!" She, laughing: "I guess he had to have something to haul away your stereo! You didn’t even wake up for this?" It seems we were in agreement, it must have been a guy who did this. We took her car.
Weeks later, an official sounding voice on the phone: "Mr. Lisser? I think we have your car - a 1970 yellow Chevy Impala?" "All right, where?" "You’ll need to tow it, the front tires are blown." Sure enough, at a city yard off the North Freeway, there was my poor, violated Lurch. The office man was talkative. "Oh, that guy, whoever he was, he took your car on a nice ride! Knocked over a Seven Eleven, then a Big Bear market, had a whole lot of city cops and DPS cars chase him up the North Freeway, dogs and all. Well he jumped the ditch and landed in a field. He got out and ran into the woods. That’s where they lost him."
So it was a guy. I couldn’t help noticing the round smashed part where my stereo thief’s head had connected with the windshield. Wisps of hair were still clinging to the cracked glass. The back seat was empty. "Did you find my stereo?" The office man looked puzzled. "Nope." I got behind the wheel, feeling kind of dirty. I’d have to fix the tires and get a new windshield. At least the engine turned over. But my stereo had, without a doubt, disappeared!
I agree with @david_ten Regarding his first point, when I got my now classic KEF 105's which enabled me to optimize the positions of the subwoofer and the mid-range & tweeter enclusures independently, I achieved incredible imaging and natural sound.
My system just reappeared. But hopefully I can figure this room out. You know, I have a feeling it’s 7/10 the room you’re in. This new house with my 2nd wife is a wonderful home but the place I had left behind was the best acoustical environment I’d ever known.
I picked it up for a song from the estate of a couple who tragically passed away in an automobile accident. It had been their home since 1957. I became the 2nd owner and it was a complete time capsule. They were a German couple and had kept the place in perfect condition. It was mid century modern dream. And it had many dark secrets that I would discover later.
Since I was living alone after my recent divorce, I converted the dining room to my dedicated listen room. It had the very early acoustical ceilings. The ceiling texture was made from a sprayed on concrete mixture that contained no asbestos. I believe this was a large part of the room’s sonic character. This room had a rock wall on one side and solid wood paneling on the other. At the time my system sounded fine and I was happy. Then my wife, my new girlfriend at the time, had me move the LP rack nearer to the system just off the left speaker for convenience sake...unknowingly right at the first reflection point. When I turned the system on for a listen, everything snapped into focus. You just don’t know you’ve been listening to smeared music until something like this happens. How long had I been listening to this system for me to finally hear how powerful room set up was!
This set the ball rolling to find out if I had finally fixed things or if I simply stepped in a spot that was just short of many more steps.
A year later, I had gotten as close as I may ever get: the speakers were now on the opposite side of the 28’ long room. The speakers were 36” from the back wall and 42” in from the side walls...alone on a heavy Persian rug with nothing between them. The equipment rack was along the side wall. I had lost some mid bass...but had gained some immense sub-bass. What a strange and welcome trade off. I had no need for subwoofers. My Salk Songtowers had such deep bass extension I had never known before. The acoustic picture was wall-to-wall and floor to 3 feet above the ceiling and the sound stage was as deep as 8’ behind the rear wall and as close as inches from me. I removed all things from the wall that were reflective and replaced them with art that was textural and soft. I have listened to some nice headphones and some great demo rooms...this room simply walked away from those.
Then I moved.
I know my current home will get better. But rooms are their own entities. I will not expect this room to come close but I will try. My new room has a much better tube amp and two dedicated outlets...but is a country mile behind. It’s the room.
Last week, actually. I was sitting in my chair flipping through an audio magazine while the music was playing. Then the vocal came on and I literally jumped and looked up because it was as if the singer was standing 5 feet from me. It was quite surreal.
Not easy to hide my Vandies in my room, but achieved a great disappearing act with room treatments a couple months ago.. Changed everything....then got my new preamp today, and its getting harder and harder to find them....depending on the quality of the recording of course.
Testpilot, LMAO....."When I got divorced". That is the most apprapros response that could have been posted. I showed my wife and we can't stop laughing 😂 Not at your expense mind you.
When I got my Klipsch Belles. The soundstage is amazing and huge. Added both width and depth, and the singers seem to come from my fireplace. When I added an old Onkyo Integra M-504 amp, it got even better. They still amaze me every time I listen to them.
You must have a verified phone number and physical address in order to post in the Audiogon Forums. Please return to Audiogon.com and complete this step. If you have any questions please contact Support.
