This quality of "sameness" across recordings is certainly evident in some systems. You seem to be attributing it to speakers like Wilson or Magico, or to particular electronics. A member here with much more experience that I told me that this sense of "sameness", particularly in soundstage and imaging, is rather more dependent on the cables or the tweaks in a system. I have been playing around with cables and tweaks a lot lately, and am beginning to understand exactly what he means. All the while, my Magico speakers stayed in place and transparency to the recording has been increasing. It's been a rather ear opening period for me.
Yup, glad to hear that as it's true... especially for interconnect cables.
My system is based on achieving a 3-D, immersive soundstage. Through testing I think that it's the largest driver of speaker preference, but it's also an indication that a lot of other things are working properly as well. I think this is also a primary factor differentiating an "ordinary" sounding system with one that people feel are really special.
As far as cables and tweaks, you can lose a lot of fine detail via IC cables, so they are a key component and often more important vs actual components. There are a lot of really good components these days, and cables too, but we know less about cables so there is more variation and little to guide folks to ones that perform properly in the context of a high end system.
Tweaks can act as harmonic "extenders"... If you consider that a mic will only create an electrical signal due to diaphragm movement, and there is a limit to it's sensitivity, so as it's recording at a certain point it will truncate the information. Then more info is lost during mastering and playback, so what we end up with is truncation of the ambient spatial information and fine detail in vocals and string instruments our ears expect to be there. Tweaks such as footers, resonators, etc.. can actually recreate this lower level information via an electromechanical feedback process, this is the process that racks and footers modify. IMO, when the tweaks extend the harmonic information already in the music in such a way that mimics what we hear in real life, then it makes the whole presentation clearer and more immersive.*
EDIT: And more transparent to the music too, this is exactly what I was talking about my previous posts as these tweaks are also distortions and additions to what's in the recording, yet they make it sound like it's clearer and more transparent. Single driver/SET type systems are often more sensitive to this electromechanical feedback, with a glaring example being the vacuum tube, which are all microphonic to some degree. So this is part of the reason some may feel the simple system is more transparent... and they attribute this to simplicity, but it's really NOT that simple, unfortunately. This is evidenced by the fact systems that are very complicated can also perform at high levels.
