Speakers with imaging "Free of the box"

Mikelavigne,

Just wanted to say I always enjoy and appreciate your sharing your experiences.

I know you've been the recipient of more than your fair share of pot shots, presumably because some people look for an excuse to find fault with one who has spent a lot of money on their audio system. As I see it, it's all insanity - just to varying degrees. Or maybe it's like criticizing the quarterback because he gets to date the cheerleaders - we'd do it too if we could.

I have learned and benefitted from your sharing your experiences with us. You have been able to try things that many of us have not, so thank you Mike for freely sharing so that we can make better choices with our systems.

Okay, back to our regularly scheduled programming.

Duke

FWIW, I haven't had this problem even with conventional box speakers. Although I am in the very small minority, I listen to all music in surround. With a properly setup surround system, the speakers really disappear. Of course, there are system variable that make them vanish better than others, but surround has been the David Copperfield of speaker disappearing acts.

Imaging and the speakers "disappearing" aren't necessarily the same thing in my book - my Spica TC60s produced holographic images with small scale music but on large scale classical or rock - anytime they were pressed - they got congested and sounded like box-like indeed. Any decent speaker, placed correctly, should surely be able to image outside the box.

If we're just talking speakers that are actually "boxes" but disappear I'd certainly have to second various Alon/Nola speakers as well as ProAcs, Audio Physics, Ohms, Shahinians, Rockports...sure I'm forgetting some. Notice that many of these are dipoles or omnipolars.

Of course, then you have the planars and stats - the BIG Maggies, Quads, Sound Labs, Apogees which are not boxes and don't sound like it. Hooray!

Electronics and speaker placement are key to getting most box speakers to disappear.

I've had two speakers that fit the bill, Audio Physic Virgo IIs and their big brothers the Avanti IIIs.... Absolutly disappear!

Duke; thank you for the kind comments.

any time there is a speaker thread and you have posted (whether here or AA) i always read your comments to learn from you. i know i'll never really understand speaker dynamics like i'd like to.....but thanks for the always cogent observations and helpful answers. after reading your speaker posts over the years the excellent performance of your speakers at RMAF was no surprise.