Shahinian Acoustics Starter
by Chris Thomas

Issue 3 - November 1999

You don't need to spend a fortune to get a great audio system. Less grand affairs that feature more humble components are more interesting in many ways than the 'super-systems'. I say they are more interesting because often they can be more musically enjoyable, and certainly more relaxing and less relentless to listen to. The more successful ones will almost certainly avoid being particularly "Hi-Fi" at all. Perhaps there will be no thunderous bass or soaring treble, but the room will be remarkably free of cables and custom-built black metal racks. Successful professional musicians, who could afford just about anything that took their fancy have such systems. Often, when they ask me about an upgrade and I explain what is involved; they just do not want to know about all the paraphernalia that goes along with a step upwards. To them the music is the message - the hi-fi an inconvenience. Well from now on I shall be able to recommend a speaker, that at least does not require you to lay out your living room like a cinema, drill screw holes in the floor or even to rearrange the furniture. It's small, it's light, it's reasonably priced and it is called the Shahinian Starter.

The Starter is the latest and least expensive in a six-speaker range designed by Dick Shahinian in New York and imported into this country by Pear Audio. Dick himself believes fervently that most loudspeakers are variations on a theme and based on a design concept that is, in itself, flawed. He states that the second worst shape for a loudspeaker, after a cube, is a rectangular box with a driver stuck in the middle of it. And that certainly sounds familiar, doesn't it? His argument is that drivers should be polydirectional and not mounted face-on, as this is the best way to mimic the radial waveforms of music. Neither does he think in terms of left and right and quotes another colleague when saying that he knows of no music which starts out as two sources. I understand where tie is coming from with this, but when my friend and I play guitar together, as a duet, surely that could he seen as two sources. But Dick prefers to concentrate on his speakers presenting music as a complete entity Rather like a live performance in fact. The Starters certainly look different and have their units mounted atop the cabinets on a small, stiff, sloping baffle, seemingly firing upwards at an angle towards the ceiling. The cabinets are small, measuring amity 25 inches at their highest point, subtly grained and constructed of Finland Birch plywood, chosen for its diffuse resonant character, and the unusual consistency of the bonding process, thus eliminating voids between the layers. The overall effect is to create a far more consistent box. I like the look of them, and top quality ply is an interesting material, especially when the corners are left open-edged, revealing the layering, like these. The two drivers are a 6" plastic cone SEAS unit, made for Shahinian, and a 1" domed tweeter from the German company LPG. To avoid standing waves and other resonant nasties the internal mechanical loading of the driver consists of two or unequal length chambers with wooden filters located at different positions venting the SEAS unit downward. Another unusual aspect of their design is that they sit on hard and slippery plastic feet and not spikes. Importer John Burns assures me that if you were to mount spikes to the Starters you would loose all the bass into the floor. Some Shahinian models even sit on castors - heresy indeed, but I predict a trend of non-spiked loudspeaker designs over the coming few years.

They deserve a good source and a good amplifier, though this does not necessarily mean expensive. I used a Naim NAC 72/NAP 140 combination with a CD3 Compact Disc player though I reckon a Nait 3 would do an excellent, and more cost-effective job, too.

No matter how many speakers you have heard I promise you that the Starters will surprise you with their presentation. Dick Shahinian's notion of no left or right sources comes home with a bang. The whole concept of the twin speaker/central image goes out of the window. There is no sense of bass and middle with a high frequency unit working away on top but rather an unusual and very interesting integration of sound, which all seems to be coming from one area. This does not mean that the soundstage is not broad and large, because it is. It also has great stability and presence, and is not remotely flimsy or diffuse. Initially it is the way these Shahinian speakers do things that holds your attention, rather than what they do. How do the Starters manage to produce a soundstage that is so broad and integrated and yet still maintain such a coherent sense of individual focus to the instrumentation? You can sit between them (or beside them) and point in space to a particular instrument, then move your position and the perspective of the sound will change, but that instrument will still be locked into the soundstage in relatively the same place. The closest thing I can liken it to is watching a band perform on stage while walking around the auditorium. The view is different, but the performance is the same. Nevertheless I still think that some people will hear the Shahinians as being 'wrong". We have all been weaned on two-channel stereo, and the way it portrays music, and we inevitably accept this as being "right". Shahinian speakers challenge the status quo by daring to be different in the way that they do things.

Never has the old adage of the whole being greater than the sum of the parts been more appropriate. The Starter does not have the deepest or tightest bass in its class, but it certainly has one of the most musical and rhythmically progressive. It powers along with tremendous verve and assurance and a remarkable sense of togetherness, never sounding detached but always having its own space and freedom of expression. There is a slight boxiness here, though it can be minimised to some extent by swivelling the Starter around its own axis so that the speaker units themselves are firing at a different angle, and this can certainly help bass focus too. But this is not an overly critical exercise as the Starters definitely do not require the minute and precise degrees of positioning that most designs seem to need these days. There is no single position "sweet-spot", but rather several of them, and depending where you are sitting you simply get a different view of the recording.

Marcus Miller's Tales (Dreyfus 36571-2) shows just how musically cute the little Starter can be. If you like bass playing then Marcus is your man. He doesn't just play; he thumps, slaps, caresses and programs bass synthesisers to give his music a complexity of low-end drive, texture and colour. Often he will layer the bottom end with three or four tracks of different basses and record a lot of the midband instrumentation with contrasting inverse phase to give it a hollow effect. He'll then slap on a really firm drum sound and biting cymbals over the top as if to throw the bass tracks into greater relief. Although this gives an air of distinction and separation to the recording it has, on more than one occasion, given real problems to loudspeakers. More than one bass track, and I mean big bass tracks, can give the impression that the system is floating rather than swimming. The Shahinians were remarkable here, staying well in control of the colour and pace of the low frequencies. They were leaner, sharper and more rhythmic than I expected, with a really neat ability to keep hold of the different elements of the performance and not blur them into one. Holding down a mean bass line while allowing the mid and top full harmonic rein is a good trick for a such a modest sized speaker, though they do seem to enjoy being driven hard, and their abilities encourage such use. At lower levels their performance can seem a little muted and the bandwidth somewhat restricted at the extremes. The lowish height of the cabinet works against the speaker to some extent, and the projected soundstage perhaps feels a little low and flattened. With a more conventional speaker, increases in volume tend to push the music out and toward the listener but the Shahinians spill the sound into the room in more of an upward direction. Hard driving reinforces their soundstage, and gives them more space to integrate in free air.

Shahinian speakers are different, and may fall into the love 'em or hate 'em category I am firmly in the former, and believe that when driven with a suitable amplifier, and fed with a good source, they are capable of a truly musical performance. I applaud Dick Shahinian and his ideas, and would urge you to give them or their bigger brothers a serious listen.

TECHNICAL SPECIFICATIONS

Frequency Response; 50Hz - 20Khz +/- 3dB
Sensitivity; approx. 88dB / 1 Watt / 1M
Impedance; 6 ohms nominal
Size; 540 x 240 x 240mm (H x W x D)
Finishes; Maple, Black or natural (unfinished)

Prices; £1195 or £1095 in natural

Manufacturer
Shahinian Acoustics,
New York
The best source of internet information is via the Australian distributor at; www.dynavector.com

Importer
Pear Audio,
7 Prospect Place,
Alnmouth,
Northumberland
NE66-2RL
Tel. (44)(0)1665-830862
Fax. (44)(0)1665-830051

Back to Last Page | Top | Forward to Next Page | Technical Review index