PMANCHESTER@ccmail.sunysb.edu (Peter Byrne Manchester) (01/03/91)
A couple of months' reading of this digest has shown me that ambitious
middle-of-the-market types like me can participate without shame, and I think
I found a thread I can contribute to. Somebody asked the other week what
people could recommend in speakers south of $3K, and since I haven't seen them
discussed here or mentioned in the last index, I thought I might report on my
satisfaction with the Shahinian Obelisks, which presently go for just about
$2000 even the pair.
A little context: I got into the Search for Perfection from the very
early 60s, when I was in college and had my father-the-doctor's budget to work
with. In those days we were among the first to run AR-3s with Dynakit Mark
IIIs. Reduced after graduation to my own means, I lived through the late 60s
and 70s with Standard Issue: the AR turntable, Dynakit PAS-3 and Stereo 70,
and AR-4s. By the mid-80s, I was in a position to make some moves of my own.
True doctrine taught me to shop first for speakers, and my wife agreed we
should make a real investment there. I went into the market for speakers I
could die with.
For four years, starting in '83, I would stop in at any audio store I
saw alongside the road and ask to hear what they thought were their BEST
speakers. In the end, given a budget of about $2000, it came down to two
radically different approaches: among planar speakers, the Magnapans; among
dynamic speakers, the Obelisks.
My next door neighbor and friend has Magnapans, and I listened to them
extensively. I must say that as far as I am concerned, the electrostatic
approach to a planar speaker is simply refuted by them. They have musically
worthwhile bass--not for rock and reggae, perhaps, but for nearly all acoustic
music, including orchestra and opera. It is true that they are highly
sensitive to room geometry and placement, and that their 'sweet spot' for
listening is fairly narrow, but I have never heard speakers more able to
create a genuine stereo stage, with stable and highly individualized locations
for instruments and voices.
The more I listened, the more it seemed that there is a theoretical
choice to be made. One theory, with phenomenological and I suppose even
metaphysical consequences, holds that the ideal speaker is a moving wall. For
such an approach, it seemed to me that the Magnapans are champion; Quads are
just too finicky. The other theory holds that ideal speakers are pulsating
spheres; here I think that Shahinian triumphs over Bose, perhaps best-known of
the omnidirectional speakers.
Planar speakers (among which I count dynamic direct-radiator stacks
that try for high phase coherence) clearly win on stereo staging detail. But
they seem to me to open a window into a representational space; even when very
realistic, they are still a presentation, an artifact. Omnidirectional
speakers put the music into the real space of one's room, and at their best
expand that room to fit the music. I think that of all the features of the
Obelisks that I enjoy most after nearly four years with them, my favorite is
that they do not get louder as one approaches them or even stands between
them. They have none of that 'at you' effect that I now find so distracting
with most direct radiators.
The Obelisk is a friendly little cabinet, a kind of R2/D2. It stands a
little taller than knee-high, a vertical rectangle of about the dimensions of
a typical full-range bookshelf speaker (27"x14"x12") but sitting on big high
quality castors so you can roll it around. For bass it uses a high-travel 8"
woofer, coupled to a 10" passive radiator facing backwards, driven by a
proprietary adaptation of the transmission tube. The woofer gives way at 6db/
octave at 1800Hz to a set of mid-range and treble domes arranged to fill a 270
degree solid angle faced upwards: two mid-range domes face north and south,
four dome tweeters face N/S/E/W.
The speakers have a very dry bass, but highly satisfactory. Two larger
units are now available with true subwoofer capabilities, but in my medium-
small room the Obelisks are completely authoritative. They are smooth and
musical throughout the range, but it is the special character of their spatial
effects that grows on me the most. Lateral placement is diffuse, compared to
planars in particular, and differs in different listening positions, but in a
real sense there are no disadvantageous ones. Most striking is depth, their
ability to impart to one's own space much of the sense of size and space of
the source. This makes them splendidly effective with stereo video and TV, by
the way; one can sense the passage from indoors to outdoors for example with
uncanny realism.
Final comment: with the Obelisks I have experienced for the first time
the need to adjust preamp gain not for volume or for loudness, but for size,
the size of the instrument or ensemble one is hearing. The moment of realism
is surprisingly distinct and decisive. A viola da gamba will sound nasal and
tubby if made too big, for example, or a harpsichord too mechanical and thin
if left too small. My enthusiasm for these speakers at first was so great
that I thought that they should be made mandatory. For now I will just say
that I find that they deliver superb value and liveability at $2000. For
somebody looking in that range, it is worth the effort it can be to find a
local dealer and give them a listen.