what speakers do the best "disappearing act"??

Excellent points on quality control, Subaruguru!

Ultimately, I found driver-to-driver inconsistencies to limit what I could accomplish on my own during my years as an amateur speaker builder.

Now that I think about it, the three speakers I mentioned above all excel in this area. The active Meridians used individually-tweaked amplifiers to set the exact levels of each driver, and if memory serves me right, when ordering replacement drivers they would ask for the serial number because they matched the replacements based on their database at the factory.

You mention Snell as a company that pays special attention to driver-to-driver matching, and in retrospect I'd have to credit the Type A's excellent imaging in part to this.

The Sound Labs have a bias control for each panel that allows precise level matching. I have found that sometimes, especially with tube amps, one channel may be a tiny bit louder than the other. By tweaking the bias controls on the Sound Labs I can dial that vocalist right in to dead center, and the result is much more three-dimensional than using a balance control in the signal path would be.

Fcrowder, I remember well the way the Meridian and Snell placed the analog noise at the speakers, instead of back in the sound field. This made it much easier to ignore the ticks and crackles, much as it's easy to ignore minor audience noises at a symphony concert because they are not spatially intermingled with the music.

You also spoke about being able to move around in the room and have the location of the instruments remain stable. This is something a line source inherently does better than a point source, because the decrease in volume with distance is much more gradual with a line source than with a point source. Of course the speaker would need a wide, uniform radiation pattern to give decent soundstaging from well off-axis. Also, a tall line source will have the same tonal balance whether you're sitting or standing, which I think is kinda neat.

I think the disappearing act is also closely dependent on the source material. I auditioned Dynaudios (the ones with the Esotar tweeter, in the range one up from the Contour, but about the same size and driver complement as a Contour 3.3) with Pass amps and a very expensive CD player (sorry, I don't normally sound this thick but my mind was elsewhere that day, as I tried to fit in a little listening when I should have been working! By the way I am self-employed so I couldn't get fired, which is one good thing... although I have thought at some points of firing myself... I digress), and realised how good speakers, in a good system in a good room, can only do so much. As they normally do, the salesperson put on something that flatters the system, in this case a jazz vocalist (again, I couldn't identify her) with a small group. The sound was excellent and the most amazing part was the "disappearing act". Since I had gone unprepared, the only material I had with me with which I was familiar (although I had not listened to it in ages) was a Denon recording of Beethoven's ninth symphony by the Staatskapelle Berlin under Otmar Suitner which I had in the car. When the CD was put on I couldn't believe what I heard: the orchestra was stuck way out in the front of the room, somewhere in the centre third of the space between the speakers, with really nothing near the speakers, on the outside of the speakers or appearing to come from in front of the speakers. So, on the one hand, a small group and vocalist, sounded as though they were in the room, life-size, totally divorced from the boxes, and an orchestra sounded like it was being heard through a basement window, maybe away from the boxes, but I am sure that such a narrow sound field is nobody's idea of great sound! Yes, the room itself and the placement of the speakers vs. the listener in that room are crucial, the speakers themselves are crucial (although, as it was pointed out, a great many speakers can do the trick, small box speakers or those with a narrow baffle seem to have less difficulty doing so, but that is a generalization and hardly significant), but the one forgotten factor which is paramount is the recording itself. So before you thrash your speakers, make sure they are properly set up and are fed something decent, but if nothing gives you the result you expect, remember the old adage about the sow's ear and the silk purse and realise it may be time for you to move on to other speakers-, at which point you may want to consider a true bargain in the all enveloping, disappearing, boxless category: the Magneplanar 3.6. Although you are the only one who can make a final decision, keep an open mind, audition everything you can within your budget and realise that you often have to accept inferior sound as a price for a superior performance, and, no matter the quality of the playback equipment, you will have to grin and bear it. Don't just listen to the sound of the system, focus on the music. In closing, and I don't want to turn this into an Olympic event, but can most adults hear a 1/3 db. difference? I doubt it, but again at the risk of repeating myself, I only have gold plated ears.

My personal experience with speakers of this character include the Rogers LS3/5a (15 ohm version) and Gallo Nucleus Reference. -Sam

I have the Dynaudio 1.3Se's and I am constanly amazed at how the speakers seem to just not be the source of the music. The sound is so smooth and integrated to the music that I need to close my eyes so that I don't stare at the speakers and try to locate the sound instead of just listening to the music. Now that I have finished all the tweaks on my todo list. It is a real satifying experience. Dale

Audio Physic Virgos. They're very difficult to set up properly, but once you get the set up right, they do disappear. It's very impressive. Still, that's not to say that they are the best out there - I find the vocals on my Virgos not quite as good as my previous B&W Nautilus 805s.