Tvad:
I'll give it my best. In my experience speakers have to do a number of things really well to totally "disappear". First, they have to be tonally correct. At one point I owned a pair of Spendor S-100's. A friend came over on day who had not heard them yet. He walked in the door and from the entry way (without being able to see the speakers or setup) he remarked how it sounded like someone was playing a saxophone in the other room. The Spendors were so true in the midrange that they simply "disappeared" by faithfully reproducing the sound of the instrument. The Daedalus speakers do this as well as any I've heard. Another thing a speaker needs to do to "disappear" is recreate a soundfield wherein the speakers do not cue your ear as to their location. This my DA-1.1's do very well but are not in the same league as the best I've heard in this regard. Perhaps this has to do with the offset tweeter arrangement used on this model. Or maybe this is attributable to other components in my system that are not allowing the speakers to do the kind of disappearing act they are able to perform. It may well be that Lou's reference models (Ulysses and DARma) are better in this regard. I cannot say for sure. I do know the reference models are intended to image more precisely and I would expect that they create a better soundstage than the "whole house" models like the DA-1.1. In addition, a speaker must be totally coherent in order to fully disappear, otherwise you are able to hear drivers handing off to each other thus drawing your attention to the speaker and not the music. The Daedalus are the most coherent multiway speaker I've ever heard--period. Finally, in order for speakers to disappear the box cannot contribute to the sound you are hearing. Lou's cabinets are very dense and, while they may contribute more noise than some of the exotic materials out there, I do not sense that they are contributing to the sonic landscape. To summarize, my Daedalus disappear darn well--better than nearly anything I've heard--and the reference models are probably up there with the best that are available.
