Speakers with imaging "Free of the box"

I'm surprised no one has mentioned Alon. The Model I has stellar imaging that casts a believable soundscape. The dipole midrange mounted on an open baffle must be playing a role here. The box enclosing the 8 inch woofer is quite narrow which keeps diffractions to a aminimum.

The Totem Arro, Sttaf, and Mani-2 also deserve mention. In terms of currently available, affordable speakers, they're especially noteworthy. They disappear without much trouble.

The type of speakers and optimum set-up I am sure are important for imaging, and in my experience I tend to agree that monitor speakers and small front baffle speakers do this best. However, in my preamp search, I also found significant differences in imaging and the ability of the speakers to "disappear" depending on what preamp was being used, without changing anything else.

The Bose Acoutimass 5's did a great job of disappearing. Unfortunately there were many other reasons these were not great audiophile speakers; timbre, power handling, distortion, frequency response, transient response etc.(especially in the sub which sounded terrible)

I would definitely not pursue a speaker designed specifically for the purpose of disappearing; a balance of qualities is preferrable to having one defining feature.

I think there are many speakers that have the capability of "disappearing". However it seems that a certain degree of "invisibility" is dependent on the complete chain of recording from the studio all the way to the listening room.

Some speakers may disappear, move em and they're back or change the source and they're back or change the recording and they're back...

Well, you get my drift.

After saying all this, if all is optimized, it seems that planar speakers seem to be the easiest to make "disappear" followed by smaller monitors then narrow baffled, well braced floorstanders with quiet enclosures.

The issue is whether you can make a *particular* speaker disappear in your room and not have a "disappearing" speaker (since basically NO speaker can just disappear on its own).

Good Luck on your speaker hunt!

Avalon's Eidolon and Eidolon Diamond