With the Hawk and the Diapason, Shahinian moves into modular designs. The bass modules are separate from the elongated-pyramid roofs, which rest on the flat tops of the bass modules. The midrange and treble drivers can be connected to the terminals of the bass modules by short umbilical…
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On the Obelisk, the faces of the pyramid or roof are symmetrical, and hold 1.5" dome midrange/tweeters firing back and front, and four 3/8" supertweeters firing to the four compass points. The Obelisk's roof is part of the same enclosure as the bass unit, and there is only one set of binding posts.
On the subject of getting the most out of these idiosyncratic speakers, Dan Banquer of RE Designs passed along to me the experience of one of his customers, who solved the problem of integrating the Diapasons (which, like the Hawks, are modular) into his room by use of a multichannel preamplifier with separate trim pots for each channel's volume, and a master volume control. This, of course, requires biamplification, but if you've gone that far you probably would benefit even more by being able to adjust the balance between the bass modules and the upper modules for the conditions in your…
A man dies and goes to hell, and Satan meets him at the gate: "Just this once, I'm going to let a newcomer choose his own torment," he says as he leads the deceased from room to room, opening doors on all manner of abuse—burning, flaying, Lou Reed's The Raven, you name it.
Then Satan opens the door to a room filled with dumpy-looking middle-aged men, chatting amiably and sipping coffee. There are no screams here: only the airy, well-located sounds of Singapore-based vocalist Jacintha, coming from an expensive-looking stereo at one end of the room.
The newcomer glances down and…
Long unaware that such a thing might be necessary, I read AudioQuest's explanations on their website and on the product packaging itself, and learned the following:
• Insulation stores and releases energy, and because of that fact (my emphasis), insulation is a dielectric.
• The way in which a dielectric behaves—which is to say, the way in which it releases stored energy—changes if and when a charge is present.
• Air is the best insulation because it does not absorb and release energy.
• Whenever a cable does not have a charge on it, it re-adapts back to its…
Those are the general details for AudioQuest's new product ranges. As to the specific products I received for review, these were the Cheetah interconnects with RCA plugs, which feature DBS, PSS, Teflon Air-Tubes, and Triple Balanced design, and the single-wired Mont Blanc speaker cables with PSS banana plugs, which feature DBS, PSC, SST, and Counter-Spiraling "Earth Feature" Geometry.
Listening
I began by replacing my homemade interconnect cables—single-conductor solid-core silver in clear, loose-fitting polyethylene jackets, terminated with inexpensive gold-plated Deltron plugs—…
Sidebar 1: Specifications
Description: Wires.
Prices: Cheetah: $1000/1 meter pair, balanced (XLR) or unbalanced (RCA). Mont Blanc: $2100/10' pair, single-wire, spade-lug or banana-plug termination. Approximate number of dealers: 400.
Manufacturer: AudioQuest, 8710 Research Drive, Irvine, CA 92618. Tel: (949) 585-0111. Fax: (969) 585-0333. Web: www.AudioQuest.com.
Sidebar 2: Associated Equipment
Analog sources: Linn LP12 turntable, Naim Armageddon power supply, Naim Aro tonearm; Lyra Helikon Mono, Miyabi 47, Linn Akiva cartridges.
Digital source: Sony SCD-777ES SACD/CD player.
Preamplification: Audio Note AN-S2, Tamura TKS-83 step-up transformers; Fi preamplifier.
Power amplifier: EAR 890.
Loudspeakers: Quad ESL-989.
Cables: Interconnect: Audio Note AN-Vx, Nordost Valhalla, homemades. Speaker: Audio Note AN-SPx, Nordost Valhalla, homemades. AC: JPS Labs Digital on Sony CD player, all others stock.
Accessories: Mana stands under…
Manufacturer's Comment
Editor: Like any greedy manufacturer (cable guys aren't actually a different class), I appreciate it when my products get attention, and I appreciate it more when they get compliments. So I should just write like a normal manufacturer, thanking Art Dudley for his time and attention and for the good review, and maybe sucking up just a bit about how intelligent and enlightened he was to have described so well the subtleties of my products—or I can be good old, barely tolerable, contrarian me, and focus on the deficiencies instead of the positives.
I can only…
Michael Fremer wrote about AudioQuest Cheetah & Kilimanjaro in January 2004 (Vol.27 No.1):
The winners [in my search for cables to use with Musical Fidelity's kWP preamplifier and kW monoblocks] were AudioQuest's new Kilimanjaro speaker cable ($4400/8' pair) and Cheetah interconnect ($1000/1m pair), both of which feature an onboard, battery-powered Dielectric-Bias System (DBS), which puts all of the cable's dielectric into a relatively high-voltage (24V) DC field. There is no interaction with the signal path. AudioQuest claims that cable and capacitor break-in is all about the "…
Kalman Rubinson wrote about AudioQuest's DBS cables in November 2004 (Vol.27 No.11):
Over a period of several months I fielded requests from Joe Harley of AudioQuest to install their new Dielectric-Bias System (DBS) cables in place of the AQ cables I already had. I cannot convey how unenthusiastic I was about changing my cables, and I was not encouraged by Art Dudley's assessment of AQ's single-ended Cheetah and mono-wired Mont Blanc in the August 2004 Stereophile. Cables have never been a big deal for me. As long as they're competently made, electrically and physically, I adapt pretty…