[lord dubious]

Hi All

I saw in a recent post under Aspen Amplifiers that a fellow forum member uses a pair of Shahinian Diapason speakers.  The Shahinian Diapason speakers are unusual in their design and quite expensive.  I cannot afford these, but I would be interested in building something like them, or one of the lesser (but similar) Shahinian designs.  Does anyone know of a speaker design or kit that incorporates the ideas built into these speakers?

Thanks

[kfr01]

Curious as to why you're interested in them...?

Stereophile hated them and their design seems to buck current speaker design thinking.  Indeed, the design -intentionally- includes some funky valleys and peaks into the freq response curve to suit the designer's ears.  (see the stereophile review below).

http://stereophile.com/floorloudspeakers/593shahinian/

Sounds like a reason that they haven't become more popular in 10+ years on the market.

[lord dubious]

Hi kfr01

I have not listened to these speakers, but I like unconventional things and guess I have a morbid interest in multi directional speakers.

Thanks for replying.  My question was a little strange

[kfr01]

I can appreciate trying something different.  Have you heard the sound from the Mirage Audio OMNI series?

http://miragespeakers.com/omniseries.shtml

The midrange and tweet are a bit omnidirectional.  They sound pretty airy and spacious, but I didn't feel that they imaged well and had some unbalanced sound in the midrange.  

These might be an easy omnidirectional speaker to demo in an AV store...

[JLM]

My experience with omni's is that they can produce a large soundscape, with more of a natural (less specific) sort of imaging that can be enjoyed across the room (you're not locked into a single listening position).  IMO most of the imaging audiophiles are after is "hyper-real" (artificially created).

Realize that bass in omni-directional already (how far the effect extends up in frequency range depends solely on the driver diameter).

Some designers add a front firing tweeter so that high frequencies (that beam like a flashlight) aren't lost to the listener.  Such a design can be fairly easily built by using a top firing mid/bass driver to this tweeter.