'Being There' - Different ways to skin a cat.

I have a second system at home which consists of Toshiba DVD/32.5/110/AE1s. This combination makes a pleasant sound which equates to music with surprising regularity. But it would take a very expensive cocktail of mind altering substances to believe for a moment that the musicians had entered the room and started playing.

This is an often stated ambition on this forum: to be able to close your eyes and hear the orchestra or band performing solely for your pleasure. I think all of us accept this to be an impossible goal but we take steps which aid our suspension of disbelief.

Yesterday I had the pleasure of listening to a Naim system similar to my own in every respect apart from the speakers which are completely different: huge floorstanders, whilst I have standmounts. Each system produces a very different sound but each, in its different ways, is helping to create that illusion of 'being there'.

The floorstanders, with their great scale and dynamics, manage to convince their owner that, upon returning home from a concert and putting on the CD, the magic is not lost. The atmosphere is retained. He is not faced with a thin, unsatisfying imitation of what he’s just heard live.

When I close my eyes my standmounts also create the impression of being there but by very different means: image and soundstage. They are almost holographic and have a wonderfully deep soundstage which is very persuasive. But they cannot reproduce the scale, dynamics or bass depth of the floorstanders.

I have read on this forum that if you close your eyes at a classical concert, say, there is little imaging or soundstage in reality. This is probably true, but it seems to me misses the point. Given that we know the performers are not in the room when we listen to our hi-fi then the creation of depth, space and image have the psychological effect of helping to reinforce our suspension of disbelief even if it does not exactly mimic reality.

We need more clues and aural reinforcements without visual evidence. To prove this one only need to watch a classical concert on TV. If you close your eyes it is almost impossible to discern individual instruments when relayed through the tv speakers; open your eyes and suddenly you can hear the violin being played as you watch the movement of the bow.

Alex