Quote Originally Posted by Florian
Well it takes a bit of a mental help to get there ;-)
If the recording is good there are systems that can get very very close but it ultimately depends on the person itself. This "directonality" you speak of can be made completely gone with some big planars and MBL's

Just a tini tiny bit of something, but music doesn't life in boxes......please dont shoot me now.
If the speaker design is very well executed, the sound SHOULDN'T be restricted to boxes.
It has been my experience that speakers that sound "trapped in boxes" are often not set up/positioned right, are too close to walls or are too far away from the listener, or have some serious fundamental design issues. In other words, not the box's fault at all.

Geez, I made a small, 6 inch tall $20 speaker last year that used 1 full-range driver and slope shaping filter circuit to clean up a few issues. Basically a Home-Theater-In-A-Box design that sounds much better than most HTIB's you can buy in store. I wouldn't recommend them for critical music listening, but even those little things presented a 3 dimensional soundstage that stretched well outside the speaker cabinets.

I've had some speakers (my old PSB's) that didn't capture that however, and I could only get to sound right when used as nearfield monitors. I blame that on design execution, not the fact it had a box. Every speaker I've ever built has no problem disappearing in a room. Most visitors in my home theater always think 7 speakers are playing with the sub when it's in stereo mode. My 2-channel setup is a huge step up still.

For what it's worth, most the sound isn't being produced or directed in the box anyway.

Ever listen to a guitar? Strike a chord, and some of the sound "appears" to come from the source of the pick on the strings, but most of it comes from a wider, general area...nothing trapped in a box at all.