When Did Your System Disappear?

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 ! 

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.

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.

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.