Don't you love it when the speakers vanish? Not literally, of course—but sonically. You close your eyes, and there’s no box, no cabinet, no driver—just a voice hanging in the air. A cymbal shimmering twenty feet behind the wall. The illusion is so real, it feels like a trick of the mind.
But on some systems, it doesn’t happen.
Instead, we hear sound from the speakers. Vocals tethered to one box or the other. Imaging that skews off center. Soundstage that feels flat, or worse, claustrophobic. And what’s maddening is that it’s usually not the gear’s fault. It’s where we’ve put it.
A speaker—even a great one—is only as good as where it’s placed.
In The Audiophile’s Guide, I talk about the “magic triangle”—that classic equilateral arrangement between the two speakers and the listening position. It’s a starting point, not a finish line. What we’re really doing when we set up a system is finding the place where the speaker can disappear. And that takes work.
We listen for a solid center image. Is the singer locked in place. We listen for stage depth. Do instruments bloom behind the plane of the speakers, or are they stuck to the front of the speaker? These cues aren’t subtle once you start to recognize them.
Many speakers never quite disappear. Not because they can’t—but because they’re placed where it’s convenient, or symmetrical, or “looks right.” The sweet spot might be two inches forward, or three degrees of toe-in away. But unless you go looking, you’ll never know.
And when you do find it—when everything clicks and the walls fall away—you realize what you’ve been missing. Not just sound, but presence. Music that doesn’t just play at you, but unfolds in front of you, like a scene in a play. That’s when the system stops being a collection of gear and becomes something more.
A window.
So if your speakers are still “there,” if they haven’t disappeared—maybe they’re just standing in the wrong spot. And maybe, just maybe, they’re waiting for you to find where they really belong.
