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Vanishing speakers - how do they do it?

Good quality speakers set up properly and suited to the room and fed with a good recording should have no problem 'vanishing' , I've heard budget early 90's Mission 760i speakers with a budget Rotel amp totally 'vanish' given the right recording and every speaker I've owned since.
 
My Epos M12i will do that as would my Monitor Audio M852's,

I have some cheap separate PC speakers for my Media Center Computer and some times I am astonished at the out of box sounds that are thrown out So its not just quality of speakers perse. I have an early music record of a medieval play where the performers move around left and right back and forward that is quite convincing
 
Colin L said:
These vanish better than anything youve ever heard. Mad but true.

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yes I agree about putting a curtain in front of that lot so that they vanish
 
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Imaging/Soundstage etc is not really priority for me and probably never has been. That is not to say I don't appreciate it but tone (full sound, solidity?), speed/timing (the much quoted leading edge perhaps?) are more top of list.

I don't need a cavernous soundstage to enjoy.

Oddly enough my current speakers probably excel more on the soundstage thing and a tad less on timing but they sound full and it's a good compromise.
 
My Beolab 6000 active speakers completely disappear each side of my TV set.
My ESL’s also do that, as well as my Galions.
For me, that disappearing act is very important. I have always sought that in hi-fi — the cavernous soundstage — or for me it just isn’t hi-fi ;)
I still don’t I understand the concept of speed and timing by the way!
 
Using omnidirectional or outward-facing speakers increases the amount of reflected sound heard compared to direct. This makes the location of the speakers harder to pinpoint, but it also messes with imaging of properly done recordings. Personally, I prefer to hear recordings as they are, letting the good ones shine and accepting the less good ones for what they are. If others would rather give everything that cavernous sound, that's their choice to make.
 
mansr said:
This makes the location of the speakers harder to pinpoint,
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This is precisely what I do want. I really don't like my attention to be drawn to the physical speaker. Imaging itself I can take or leave and a cavernous sound isn't what I'm after either unless it's in the recording.
 
Quad and Maggy panels can obviously do it.

The only other speakers that I've heard disappearing completely were the original Sonabs. I know that there are modern iterations of the Sonab design, but I haven't had the opportunity to hear them.
 
DaveMc64 said:
This is precisely what I do want. I really don't like my attention to be drawn to the physical speaker. Imaging itself I can take or leave and a cavernous sound isn't what I'm after either unless it's in the recording.
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Some recordings have each track panned hard left, hard right, or dead centre. Played back on a properly imaging system, the sound will appear to come from the two speakers plus a phantom centre. Such recordings may, at least to some, sound more pleasing if the imaging is blurred such that the speakers can't be localised. The trouble is that such a setup will do the same thing to recordings with good imaging, which to me is a detriment. You are clearly of a different opinion, one that is no less valid than mine.
 
You need accurate low colouration speakers which must be well clear of walls etc and a room of reasonable acoustics. BBC monitor and panel types particularly good . No chance of any image and spaciousnous with likes of Linn Kan etc.
The other thing you need is a top quality power amp. Whilst all power amps will do it to some degree very few power amps can do it properly...
 
Interesting timing for this thread. I just picked up a clean old pair of DCM TimeFrame 400 speakers. Didn't need them, but I've always been curious and hey, they were 80 bucks. Put them in the system with really very little attention paid to positioning and presto, they disappeared, replaced by a large and believable soundstage and a kind of spooky intimacy.

Totally different experience to my current Snell Type E speakers. I've been trying to figure out what's behind it, and all I can point to is the somewhat larger front baffle, as I can't imagine the drivers themselves are significantly better than those in the Snells.

Anyway, it's a neat trick, and I'd love to have a speaker that combined it with what the Snells deliver (dynamics, balanced tonality). I'm guessing that may mean panels.
 
Colin L said:
Nail on head there Tony. Most speakers, if well set up, can create an image you can point to. Very few can recreate a realistic and all-encompassing sound field that the instruments are part of and reside in, as part of a larger acoustic picture.

For me it’s the difference between notes and music.
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marshanp said:
Lots of speakers can do the vanishing thing, given a reasonable room, suitable positioning and a good recording.

But making the room disappear - that's what counts for me, and it is harder to achieve. In my experience only omnidirectional speakers really succeed in making that deception convincing.

edit: cross-posting with Colin L, above. I couldn't agree more.
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I think this is a real issue and I would love to be able to solve it. Suggestions appreciated. Maybe Devore given the discussion above - but too expensive for me!
 
mansr said:
Some recordings have each track panned hard left, hard right, or dead centre. Played back on a properly imaging system, the sound will appear to come from the two speakers plus a phantom centre. Such recordings may, at least to some, sound more pleasing if the imaging is blurred such that the speakers can't be localised. The trouble is that such a setup will do the same thing to recordings with good imaging, which to me is a detriment. You are clearly of a different opinion, one that is no less valid than mine.
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I reckon that the appeal (or not) of omnis may depend to a considerable extent on the kind of music you listen to most. Recordings of orchestral music, if they have very definite localisation of specific instruments, need to have their imaging blurred, because real orchestras heard in concert halls don't sound like that. I find that the result can be breathtakingly realistic - easily the closest sound to that heard in the concert hall that I have experienced in a domestic setting. In normal times I go to lots of live concerts at Symphony Hall in Birmingham (UK), one of the best concert halls in the world. My speakers (Duevel Planets, then Venuses) have made the absence of live music bearable.

They have also surprised me by giving an excellent impression of a recorded acoustic from good remasterings of old mono recordings, such as the Telefunken radio tapes made in Germany during WW2. They make recordings that I wouldn't have bothered with before entirely listenable.
 
marshanp said:
Recordings of orchestral music, if they have very definite localisation of specific instruments, need to have their imaging blurred, because real orchestras heard in concert halls don't sound like that.
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It could be argued that such recordings are not made in the best way.
 
mandryka said:
I think this is a real issue and I would love to be able to solve it. Suggestions appreciated. Maybe Devore given the discussion above - but too expensive for me!
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Duevel make excellent speakers, all of them omnidirectional, at real world prices - the Planets, I think, are definitely bargain esoterica. They like an amp with a bit of oomph, which if I remember correctly wouldn't be a problem for you?
 
mansr said:
Using omnidirectional or outward-facing speakers increases the amount of reflected sound heard compared to direct. This makes the location of the speakers harder to pinpoint, but it also messes with imaging of properly done recordings. Personally, I prefer to hear recordings as they are, letting the good ones shine and accepting the less good ones for what they are. If others would rather give everything that cavernous sound, that's their choice to make.
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Omni’s don’t always “mess with the imaging” of properly done recordings (whatever they are). Mine clearly delineate and locate images and instruments, but they better present room sound and ambience than most other speakers. They don’t make a cavernous sound, they make a realistic sound.
 
Arkless Electronics said:
You need accurate low colouration speakers which must be well clear of walls etc and a room of reasonable acoustics. BBC monitor and panel types particularly good . No chance of any image and spaciousnous with likes of Linn Kan etc.
The other thing you need is a top quality power amp. Whilst all power amps will do it to some degree very few power amps can do it properly...
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I'm not sure about this tbh. Since moving house last autumn I've been really enjoying my old Sequence 300 (or is it 400?) speakers, at the end of Metrum Octave, Linn Kolektor, Chakra C2100. Now those speakers are far from being uncoloured. They're only 5 or 6 cm thick, and are about that far from the wall, but imaging / spaciousness is not bad at all, and orchestral stuff can be really quite compelling. I once read that despite being inexpensive speakers when new (about 18 years ago) they have surprisingly good tweeters. Maybe that's important for general airiness.
 
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