Speakers "Disappearing"

Not being flip but the best way to make your speakers disappear is to close your eyes or turn the lights out. Experimental psychologists have studied the "ventroloquism effect" which is a tendency for the perceived direction of sound to be where the source appears to be, not necessarily where it is. As long as you can see your speakers your brain will be fighting this tendency. This is probably one of the reasons why headphone listening can give such good localisation, nothing visual to distract the ear.  Of course it helps not to have phantom channels and room reflections messing things up too.

I listened to speakers blasting 100 watts per channel, with a thin soundstage for 25 years. Then I stumbled onto a low cost single ended pentode stereo amp, vintage 1960’s, and viola- a soundstage appeared, with incredible detail and depth- using the same old cheapo Technics 3-way speakers w/15" woofers from my solid state setup. I still vividly remember exactly how it happened. The speakers in my system are 28 feet apart, and about 5-1/2 feet high off the floor, on corner shelves. I was sitting on a couch opposite the speakers, and listening to a Jimi Hendrix tape. Suddenly I heard what sounded like someone knocking on my window, to get my attention, about 3 feet to the left of the right side speaker. (speakers are against my front house wall). Turning down the volume, I looked outside and saw no one there. Then I realized, that was the DRUMS in the song, that’s how realistic they were. after the amp warmed up good, about 2 hours later, it completely floored me. voices were appearing in the middle of the room, sound was rising up into the air like a tornado effect. a pillar of sound between the speakers. yet the speakers themselves appeared to stand there silent. it was actually EERIE. like listening to a ghost band. what recording it was, didn’t matter, they all had this impressive soundstage. when the sound does pan side to side, it does so within the confines of the speaker placement, in the space between the speakers- not from the speaker itself. Listening to Led Zeppelin live, the drum set sounded like it was 20 feet away dead center out on my front deck. what you get is, 3 pillars of sound, one dead center, one center left, one center right. and also drum sound and audience noise behind that. my living room has a vaulted ceiling that goes from 8 feet high to 16 feet high, and the speakers are mounted on the low side 8" wall corners. this gives an arena, coliseum, or theater effect, and enlarges the sound stage even more. here’s the bottom line, you won’t get a huge soundstage with lots of bloom and depth, in a small room with the speakers close together. the soundstage grows with speaker placement, the farther apart the better, and the higher the speakers the better. after experiencing this, it totally changed my listening habits from high powered 100+ watt solid state amps, to low powered 10 watt tube stereo amps. and a single ended amp will image better than a push-pull amp. I’ve done dozens of back to back tests. the single ended still has that little better edge over the push-pull in detail and soundstage every time. an added benefit is, you get much more listening pleasure from low volume and save your ears. I was blasting my eardrums out for 25 years looking for good sound from high wattage, and found it with a mere 6 or 8 watts per channel. to date the 6BQ5 tube is unmatched for sound quality on a reasonable sane budget. someday I’d like to try a 300B or 2A3 amp but they aren’t the best for contemporary or classis rock music. the 6BQ5 does everything good, for a very low cost. it was basically the pinnacle of tube development before the music industry went to solid state around 1970. all the Beatles catalog was recorded using 6BQ5 equipment. it is a very sensitive, detailed tube with a lot of detail. my amp seems to take a long time to warm up, but once it does, it’s incredible. simply marvelous, considering it was dirt cheap. the key is, maintenance. all the caps, pots, resistors, tubes, coils, transformers in the set have to be checked, and up to spec. one tiny cap in the system that’s bad, will throw it off. the output tubes have to be changed every 6 months to a year or so. and the rectifier tube kept fresh as well. the preamp tubes 12AX7 seem to last longer.  Let me add this- once you hear music played in this manner, you'll never listen to music the same again. if it doesn't have that soundstage, other systems will pale in comparison and will sound like a car radio with a single speaker in the dash.  try as you might to describe it to someone, they'll think you're nuts and imagining things- until they hear it for themselves.  I demonstrated my system for my brother, and when he got up to use the bathroom, he was looking around up at the ceiling in the hallway, thinking I had flush mount speakers hidden there to enhance the sound- because it sounded the music was coming from there.  our house cat was laying on top of the couch looking straight up between the speakers for the source of the sound, it even faked the cat out.  so this is for real, not imagined.  and it's the holy grail that been lost, with today's Chinese-made crap surround sound systems, with their tiny 7 speakers for hooked to the TV.  they're a joke.  no contest. 

If I am aware of music coming out of a box, I feel like I have a system that is a failure.  Ironic that Michael Green posted.  I purchased a pair of his rev60(?) speakers years ago.  I thought it crazy in the manual he suggested bringing the speakers half way out into the room and so far apart.  But each time I moved the speaker out further and further to that location the magic got better and better.  This was the single biggest audio epiphany for me--ever!  Thanks Michael.  My current set up ( https://systems.audiogon.com/systems/7021 ) disappears quite well indeed.

Great suggestions, but the size of my room precludes implementing several of them. My room is 11x9x8 and well treated. I have the speakers 3' from the side walls and 3' from the back wall. That's about the best I can get ... it's a challenge.