Recommend speakers that disappear

[Sokel]

Ok,anecdotal fun stuff.
Audio show where an -how can I say it- eccentric designer had a curtain across the front wall hiding the speakers.
Everyone listening to the set-up got the same impression and they could bet that the speakers where at the corners.

The truth is that the speakers where dead center 1.5 meters (yes,that close) from each other.
Some big laughs there of course.

 

[goat76]

Would you agree that getting into the illusion takes some effort on the listener's side? If it is so, what kind of an illusion is it? I mean to know that I'm in a dream, but still dreaming of me dreaming.

To call it an “stereo illusion” is a bit unfortunate as people often relate that choice of word to something “magic”. If we instead call it a stereo field that contains the depth and width of the recorded space, and the position of the instruments in that space, then this is most likely heard the same way by both of us without much effort on our part. At least if take turns sitting in the sweet spot listening to a well-tuned and well setup speaker system, and inside the critical distance where the direct sound is the dominant factor. We may describe our listening experiences somewhat differently depending on what in the overall sound we put our focus on, but I’m fairly sure we will hear it the same without much or any additional effort on our end.

What could the listener do as to not experience the illusion, just for a test? Like I said before, the idea of speakers disappearing, in my book, is a typical advertizing claim of no further merit. It may sound a bit cruel, I know that, but that's what science is about. Replace cosy illusions with cold factual knowledge.

I think most loudspeakers will “disappear” as long as most of the points I made in my previous reply are met, and granted that the recording is made in such way that no particular sound objects happen to be panned right at the position of one or the other loudspeaker.

It is cold factual knowledge that it only takes two sound sources set up in stereo in font of us to hear enough of the cues of a recorded venue in a fairly convincing way. There is no magic about it, it just two loudspeakers sharing similar sound cues projected directly into our ears making us hear the depth and width cues of the recorded space, and the positioning cues of the instruments in that recorded space.

If we are going to hear the above described projections from the two loudspeakers the best way possible, we must set them up so they sync correctly at the point of our ears so that we hear a focused and unified stereo image.

 

[Keith_W]

I'm sorry, Keith, but I disagree with what you are saying here, and in my opinion, it's the opposite of what you are saying that will have a better chance of making the loudspeakers "disappear".

That's OK, I am fine with people who disagree There are two camps when it comes to stereo reproduction - "the room creates the soundstage" and "the soundstage is in the recording". What you explained is an example of the latter. The approach taken by people in either camp is the opposite of the other. I have heard examples of both approaches and to me neither seems more correct than the other from a subjective POV. From an armchair POV I do not have strong feelings either way.

 

[olieb]

There are two camps when it comes to stereo reproduction - "the room creates the soundstage" and "the soundstage is in the recording".

Ok, that's interesting. I would fully agree with @goat76 here, and maybe just because the idea "the room creates the soundstage" does not make sense to me at all. I really do not understand what is meant by that.

I come from classical music and therefore from acoustical recordings of ensembles with variations of a stereo pair (even a Decca tree), and for mixed music or electronic music there is no real "room" where the recording took place. But even then the stereo signal is based on ITD and ILD to create the "placement".

How can the soundstage not be in the recording?
And how does the (listening) room create a soundstage i.e with a mono recording?
Can you elaborate a bit about the concept?
Or are you referring to the distinction between "they are here" and "you are there"?
Really curious to understand this.

 

[Heinrich]

... it only takes two sound sources set up in stereo in font of us to hear enough of the cues of a recorded venue in a fairly convincing way.

The listener creates an indivdual illusion in lack of a better word. My question was, what can be done to destroy it? Of course in order
to avoid those actions ;-)

But, the OP's question was another. It wasn't about the stereo effect. What @Sokel said, the magical vanishing can be had without stereo. Easiest with a strong diffuse field and less impulsive sounds, which kind of counteracts the stereo effect, though.

My bad.

 

[goat76]

The listener creates an indivdual illusion in lack of a better word. My question was, what can be done to destroy it? Of course in order
to avoid those actions ;-)

No, I said it's most likely that everyone hear the stereo illusion the same way if they take turns listening to the same recording on the same well-set-up speaker system.

If you want to destroy the possibility to hear the information that the recording contain, just do the opposite of the point I made earlier.

But, the OP's question was another. It wasn't about the stereo effect. What @Sokel said, the magical vanishing can be had without stereo. Easiest with a strong diffuse field and less impulsive sounds, which kind of counteracts the stereo effect, though.

My bad.

I have never heard a single mono speaker that can’t be localized in a room, have you?

The direct sound will always tell you exactly where it is, and I have never been in a room with such a strong reverberation that I can't pinpoint the position of a sound source.

 

[Keith_W]

Ok, that's interesting. I would fully agree with @goat76 here, and maybe just because the idea "the room creates the soundstage" does not make sense to me at all. I really do not understand what is meant by that.

There are some designers, like Linkwitz, who deliberately create speakers that throw sound around the room and create a lot of reflections. Linkwitz was noted for his dipole and omni designs. His idea was to create more lateral reflections that envelops the listener. He wrote in one of his blog posts (that I can't find right now) that in nature, we are surrounded by sound. In a concert hall, the same thing happens - sound comes at you from everywhere. But in a 2 channel speaker system with treated walls, the sound comes only from the front. There is no envelopment and no immersion.

If you pardon me, I am offering a half-hearted defence on his position because I don't really believe in it. In fact, I don't know the answer. Maybe he is right, maybe he isn't. Like I said, I don't have a strong position on it. All I know is - if you want your speakers to disappear, you need more reverberant sound in proportion to the direct sound. Listen to a pair of omnis in a large room, and it is difficult to know where the sound is coming from if you are blindfolded.

 

[olieb]

There are some designers, like Linkwitz, who deliberately create speakers that throw sound around the room and create a lot of reflections. Linkwitz was noted for his dipole and omni designs. His idea was to create more lateral reflections that envelops the listener. He wrote in one of his blog posts (that I can't find right now) that in nature, we are surrounded by sound. In a concert hall, the same thing happens - sound comes at you from everywhere. But in a 2 channel speaker system with treated walls, the sound comes only from the front. There is no envelopment and no immersion.

If you pardon me, I am offering a half-hearted defence on his position because I don't really believe in it. In fact, I don't know the answer. Maybe he is right, maybe he isn't. Like I said, I don't have a strong position on it. All I know is - if you want your speakers to disappear, you need more reverberant sound in proportion to the direct sound. Listen to a pair of omnis in a large room, and it is difficult to know where the sound is coming from if you are blindfolded.

Thank you.
But I do not see how this explains anything about the sound stage being created by the room.

In respect to Linkwitz my interpretation would be that you did not reproduce him correctly. While it is correct of course that sound comes from all directions in a concert hall, his idea certainly was not to "throw sound around the room". His use of dipole pattern is - among other things - because there is more direct sound compared to sound power than with conventional designs. And the placement of the dipole null so that the first (early) lateral reflections are attenuated tells of a different objective too.

Reflections from all directions will exist in any listening room, but that is more a question of envelopment (@goat76 mentioned it above) and not so much of sound stage, even less of "disappearing".
One of the characteristics of of dipoles is that reflections might mimic better the concert hall as the back radiation creates (stronger) reflections from the front, whereas front firing speakers produce very little (early) reflections from there, much more from sides and back.

As I see it there are three (more?) ways to make speakers disappear.
• make the sound so diffuse that reverberation drowns everything, but that is not what I want.
• create a strong and stable stereo illusion where the brain places the sound depending on the ITD and ILD embedded (hopefully) in the recording and instead of speakers a "soundstage" appears. This depends on the direct sound taking precedence. This is (part of) what I want.
• You place the loudspeaker in one focal point of a whispering gallery and the sound appears ‘magically’ in the other. ;-)

 

[Thomas_A]

Ok, that's interesting. I would fully agree with @goat76 here, and maybe just because the idea "the room creates the soundstage" does not make sense to me at all. I really do not understand what is meant by that.

I come from classical music and therefore from acoustical recordings of ensembles with variations of a stereo pair (even a Decca tree), and for mixed music or electronic music there is no real "room" where the recording took place. But even then the stereo signal is based on ITD and ILD to create the "placement".

How can the soundstage not be in the recording?
And how does the (listening) room create a soundstage i.e with a mono recording?
Can you elaborate a bit about the concept?
Or are you referring to the distinction between "they are here" and "you are there"?
Really curious to understand this.

You can very well have a studio session where the musicians are in a room iwth reflective wallls except for the frontwall. Your own room is just an extension of that room where your front wall is an opening to that recording room. So they are here rather than I am there.

 

[Duke]

I think several factors are involved in a loudspeaker "disappearing", including:

The enclosures and drivers need to be free from audible resonances. This is probably the most important factor. A resonance will tend to call attention to itself, both tonally and spatially.

The speakers need to not have features like well-illuminated sharp edges which act as secondary (distorted) sound sources. The cabinet edges can be rounded or bevelled or absorption can be used, and in some cases driver directivity can reduce the illumination of the edges. If the edges are going to be significant secondary sound sources anyway, imo the narrower the front baffle, the better.

The drivers themselves need to not have diffractive features; diffractive horns or waveguides (those with sharp edges either internally or at the mouth) come to mind. Ime for a horn or waveguide, a large-radius mouth round-over is desirable in this context.

The interaction between the drivers should be benign, and imo this includes the time domain.

As mentioned in post number 23, I find that multidirectional speakers often do a good job of "disappearing" as the apparent sound source, assuming they get the other things right.

Imo the difference between "they are here" and "you are there" is not the same issue; both types of presentation benefit from speakers that "disappear".

 

[antcollinet]

That's OK, I am fine with people who disagree There are two camps when it comes to stereo reproduction - "the room creates the soundstage" and "the soundstage is in the recording". What you explained is an example of the latter. The approach taken by people in either camp is the opposite of the other. I have heard examples of both approaches and to me neither seems more correct than the other from a subjective POV. From an armchair POV I do not have strong feelings either way.

Surely it is a combination of the two.

There can't be a sound stage if there are not differences between the sound sent to left and right speaker - as put there by the recording and production engineers. Level and phase both influence perception of position. (You can test this by converting to mono).

However reflections WILL alter the perception of the sound field - if for no reason other than they allow the audio "image" to expand out side of the speaker angle.

 

[Thomas_A]

I'm sorry, Keith, but I disagree with what you are saying here, and in my opinion, it's the opposite of what you are saying that will have a better chance of making the loudspeakers "disappear".

The most important aspect IS a high ratio of direct sound and loudspeakers that are properly set up for them to perfectly work in tandem to together create a convincing stereo illusion, and the more you hear the stereo illusion the less chance it will be that you hear the positions of the loudspeakers. It is when the stereo illusion IS the dominant factor, and you mostly hear "into the recording" with minimized/lessened impact from your listening environment that the loudspeaker will have a bigger chance to disappear.

As long as you minimize the listening triangle enough to maximize the direct sound and your listening position is inside the critical distance, the directivity index of the loudspeakers will be less important as long as they are properly set up when it comes to toe-in. The toe-in setup of highly "beaming" loudspeakers with narrow dispersion will just be a bit more critical to get perfectly right (so that no double effect* will occur), and you will probably miss more of the envelopment sensation that you (sitting inside the critical distance) will hear as a "secondary sound contribution" somewhat separated from the high ratio of direct sound that the smaller listening triangle will give you. (But the enveloping sensation is another subject and doesn't have anything to do with the "disappearing" of the loudspeaker, that is a "secondary effect" where we actually want a contribution from the listening environment).

(* I have heard the double effect occur when listening to speakers with horns when the loudspeakers didn't have enough toe-in, and I could clearly hear the singer's voice coming from both the loudspeakers and not from the phantom center where the voice should be coming from. This will definitely "give away" the position of the two loudspeakers and will destroy the stereo illusion and any chance for the loudspeakers to disappear.)



Here are my points for getting the loudspeakers to disappear:

• A high ratio of direct sound maximizes what is heard in the recording and will make the listener hear the stereo illusion instead of two sound sources/"two loudspeakers in a room". A smaller listening triangle with shorter distances to the loudspeakers will help to maximize the direct sound that carries the stereo illusion. Acoustic room treatment will also contribute to a higher ratio of direct sound by minimizing the early reflections from the listening environment, which otherwise will make it harder to hear what is in the stereo illusion.
• Properly positioned loudspeakers that work in perfect tandem together are of the highest importance to create a proper stereo illusion. The two loudspeakers are not supposed to create two separate sounds, they should together create one single unified stereo illusion.
• The best single aspect/indication that the two loudspeakers are positioned correctly is that they together create a distinct-sounding phantom center, almost as distinct-sounding as if a physical real center speaker were in place. The phantom center can be seen as the "anchor" that sets all the rest of the "stereo puzzle" right.
• The frequency response of the two loudspeakers should match well, especially above the point where our hearing is the most sensitive to directional cues.
• Loudspeakers with low levels of distortion and resonance will lessen the risk of giving their positions away.

Many modern audio productions contain hard-panned sound objects and can't "escape" from the position of the loudspeakers (unless some phase tricks are going on in the sound mix), but I think that should count more as a "visual problem" as that wouldn't be a problem if the loudspeakers weren't seen, say if a large curtain was hiding their positions.

I probably missed one or two additional important points, but the above points are likely the most important ones.

The problem though is that stereo is flawed and the stereo errors are maximised in the direct field. Cues for distance to speakers (reflections) must also either be completely eliminated or diffused well enough to fool the brain. DRR, early reflections and treble level are cues for distance perception.

 

[rynberg]

I didn't read through all the comments, but I hard disagree with the notion that limited directivity designs like Kef/JBL/Klipsch are the best from the standpoint of the speaker disappearing -- I auditioned JBL HDI, Revel Performa3, Kef R, and Ascend Acoustics Sierra in my actual home all at the same time. With eyes closed, I could point directly to the Kef and JBL EVERY single time; both the Revel and Ascend Acoustics created a much bigger soundstage and it was much more difficult to locate the speaker. This is logical based on the radiation pattern of these speakers -- wider radiation lights up the sidewalls, narrow radiation doesn't. If you are primarily hearing direct sound from the speaker, it seems obvious that it will be easier to locate.

 

[Sokel]

I would tend to believe that reflections are the key.
Forget about speakers and think about nature,outside.And take a hard example,high freq sounds which is far easier to locate.

Now,try to find the cicada if far enough from the tree.It seems that is coming from everywhere.

 

[goat76]

That's OK, I am fine with people who disagree There are two camps when it comes to stereo reproduction - "the room creates the soundstage" and "the soundstage is in the recording". What you explained is an example of the latter. The approach taken by people in either camp is the opposite of the other. I have heard examples of both approaches and to me neither seems more correct than the other from a subjective POV. From an armchair POV I do not have strong feelings either way.

The problem with the approach "the room creates the soundstage" is that there are no ways to optimize it. That would only be possible if every sound source in the mix had its dedicated loudspeaker in the reproduction system, and that specialized multi-channel mixes were created for a system like that.

 

[Clmrt]

I'm sure we've all changed speakers at least once in our hi-fi lives. I used to change speakers monthly it seems.

In any case, I got my filthy hands on a pair of NHT Classic 3, and tossed them on a pair of barstools where my Snells usually sit.

I pressed play, and was instantly transported into another space. My Snell D7s don't do that. They usually give off a "wall of sound" but not so much the 3D thing. The NHTs did. They effectively disappeared and left behind a holographic bubble of alternate reality.

Doubly intriguing, my buddy got the Classic 4 the same day. He kicked out a set of BW Matrix from 1992(?) that had been his one and only main set for these 30-odd years. The 4s did the same thing in his room, but it took some placement tweaks to dial that in. But the same thing happened. His wife was floored. He was gobsmacked. And it was repeatable in that he swapped back and forth, once, and it was obvious. They virtually disappeared. All this despite unrestored 1990 Adcom gear with speaker cables running through a selector with attenuation. Egad.

So - different rooms, different gear, different people, but basically the same speaker, same result.

Pic is of my humble room. Pedestrian gear by HiFi standards, phenomenal sound.

Marantz NR1510
Wiim puck thing
AB International 600LX
Bar stools
NHT Classic 3
Cat named Zoey

 

[Penelinfi]

Bose Jewel cubes
Cambridge Minx

 

[richard12511]

I think there may be some disagreement on what "disappear" even means here. I think I'm more in agreement with @olieb and @Keith_W , though I basically agree with everything @goat76 said, that being:

• A higher ratio of direct sound does - to my ears - create a more convincing stereo image.
• Getting that image is more a matter of setup, recording and room than it is the speakers themselves
• Basically all speakers can create a convincing stereo image if setup properly

Which is why I think I just disagree on what it means to "disappear".

For me, improving the stereo image usually comes at the expense of the disappearing act, and single speakers also disappear to some degree on their own.

I've basically got both camp's loudspeaker recommendations here, giant wide radiating towers and coaxial point sources. To my ears, and based on my idea of what those terms mean, the point sources image better, and the giant wide radiating towers disappear better.

Better imaging to me means: I close my eyes and draw circles around the images in the soundstage, and the smaller and more accurately I can define the area of those images, the better.

Better disappearing to me means: I close my eyes and try to draw an oval around the overall source of sound. The edges of the oval define my idea of "the source of sound is somewhere within this boundary". The bigger that oval is, the harder it is for me to pinpoint the source, and thus, the better.


The coax point source speakers create images that are maybe fist sized at end of arms length. As for disappearing, I can pinpoint the overall source of sound to an oval maybe 12ft wide and 2-3ft tall.

The giant towers create images that are maybe 1.5x extended hand sized at end of arms length, and disappear to an overal source of sound that's a few feet wider and about twice as tall.

The towers actually do a decent job(maybe like 3/10) of disappearing with just a single speaker in the mono. Closing my eyes and trying to pinpoint the overall sound source, I actually have to draw an oval with my arm/hand to fully encompass it.

The point sources hardly disappear at all with just a single speaker. When I close my eyes, I feel like I can fully pinpoint them with a single hand size. Part of me wonders if this is not the main reason speakers like this(ex: KEF) performed more poorly in Toole's mono listening tests than we would expect from their measurements.

The best disappearing speaker I've ever heard is the MBL Extreme at 3ma audio in Houston. Closing your eyes, it's like you can tell it's coming from somewhere on that side of the room, but not too much more than that. That said, the imaging was super diffuse and not to my liking at all.

Maybe I have the wrong idea of what it means for a speaker to disappear.

 

[jeffaegrim]

Maybe I have the wrong idea of what it means for a speaker to disappear.

Reading the thread, I too was unsure what we‘re talking about when we say that speakers „disappear“.

I haven’t heard any omnis but I understand how they function and the way people describe them disappearing makes sense.

KEFs or horn speakers also „disappear“ imo, in the sense that the sound is mostly coming from the phantom center in the middle between the two speakers.

I guess it depends on the kind of disappearing one is looking for/talking about

 

[Thomas_A]

If you sit in front of the left or right speaker and hear the phantom center as coming from between the speakers with no cues from the speaker you are sitting in front of, you have system where the speakers ”disappear”.