Very clear and extended frequency response, vocals sound very lifelike, and the upper end is very smooth and sweet, splashy in a good way and very accurate. No glare or listening fatigue whatsoever. Makes those CDs I have that always sounded "hard" very enjoyable to listen to now. Duluth Mobile Truck Repair

None . .

Arc is more manageable (for smaller rooms) and more affordable version of the Shahinian Obelisk speaker. Like the Obelisk, the Arc creates a broad yet accurate soundstage above and around the floorstanding speaker. Oh yes, forgot to mention as a floorstander, doesn't require stands or shelves to be mounted on. Give it 24 inches from back wall for passive radiator and upward facing woofer / midrange and tweeter to suspend the musical image around it. Arc, like Obelisk, is particularly good with deep bass (organ) and symphonic or large band presentations.

Arc would like lots of power (75 watts plus) with high damping, but it will perform with 20 watts in a small room (i.e., home office).

First heard the Arcs at a Hi Fi show in the early 90`s & was hooked - two years later purchased ex-dem pair for £800. Satisfaction for many years powered by an MF F15 (100W/ch) until I added a pair of MF 550K superchargers and Townshend Isolda DCT cables from the superchargers to the Arcs - WOW the arcs were lifted into a whole new level, the dynamics become staggering without ripping your ears off - soundstage becomes truely 3D, especially with orchestral music and when used with the home cinema system (sit nicely in front of the projector screen due to their limited height!) they are simply stunning. Thank you Richard Shahinian for such a design.
However I confess to some tweaking - namely fitted the latest version of the passive radiator and welded my own spiked cradle to sit under the speaker cabinet, thereby raising the plastic feet 10mm off the floor, but the cradle is totally out of sight and the cabinet is rigid (tightens the bass - no need for a sub even when watching movies)!
Highly recommended but the Arcs true ability only becomes a reality with bucket loads of good quality power.
The Musical Fidelity F15 recently underwent "Fine Tuning" by MF to which the Arcs responded with an even better musical insight.

Great sound! Makes the speakers in this price range sound like total crap!

None

Wounderful speaker, great in al areas,specialy dynamics,very unfussy about placment. You can hear the musicians playing in your living room. You don't need a strong amp to drive them,so this is for me an absolute best buy on second hand market.

Similar Products Used:

Shahinian Super Elf, Opera Pavarotti

Size and ease of placement. No matter where you place the speaker it sounds great

None for this price range--if you wish to compare the speaker to those selling for $4,000 USD--you get a tad more articulation around voices and instruments

Exceptiponally involving speaker with a beautiful soundstage. The imaging quality is first rate. This speakers hines with all types of music. Unlike most speakers, Shahinian speakers do not need special placement, pucks, or any other audio doodads to sound great. The arcs presetn a well rounded sound. They are not the absolute definition of bass, a tasteful subwoofer rounds out the bottom nicely.

Similar Products Used:

Audio Pro B2-25 with subwoofer; Allison 1:B&W 805: Sonas Faber [bookshelf model]; Shahinian Obelisk;

Great soundstage, ability to handle any amount of power, can be placed anywhere

None that I have discovered in more than 8 years

I was a little nervous buying omnidirectional speakers when not many people had heard of them let alone used them. My local hi fi store (which does not now stock them for I know not what reason) were excellent in allowing me to see how they worked at home. I liked to be a little different from friends, always wanting to do something with my hi fi that was unusual, so the Arcs were a bit of a gamble. But what a gamble - they are assured, have a fantastic bass and give the overall impression of being in the concert hall with the performers. ave recently taken a quantum leap by buying a Mark Levinson CD player and the speakers just keep on getting better. Anybody care to advise whether I would hear a major difference if I upgraded to the more expensive Shahinian speakers?? If not, I'll stick - the Arcs are more than a match for more expensive conventional speakers

The music

Bottom octave

What a pleasure to hear music. Billie Holiday' voice suspended in my living room, I can hear the vibrato, the mike shadings, the lips, the subtle slides that I never knew were there. A revelation.

Rock rocks, too. Stop Making Sense makes great sense. The Band or Simon's Capeman jsut cast a spell.

What this speaker seems to do best is present a widescreen, deep image of live music, with emotion and guts. And a sweetness that's not artificial, but so seductive, so passionate.


And they're tiny, only 28" high. But just lovely.

Similar Products Used:

Vanderstein 2c, Kef 104.2, Ohm Sub/Sat

Awesome musicality, earth shaking yet fast and rhythmic bass, pure and uncoloured midrange, one of the most engaging loudspeakers at any price.

Styling an acquired taste, and demand an amp with good control. Little else.

Forget the oddball looks, stick on your favourite album, sit back and prepare to smile. A lot.

It's hard to quantify exactly what this makes these weird looking loudspeakers so amazing, although there are a couple of things which spring to mind.

First suspect, and the most instantly “wowing” aspect of their sound has to be the bass, which goes right the way down to 25Hz (-3dB), yet is as hard-hitting and rhythmic as I have heard anywhere. Bass drums thump you in the chest, bass guitars time brilliantly, and the whole thing underpins, rather than dominates. The speaker strikes an almost impossible balance between finesse, and sheer welly.

The other big surprise is a midband which is almost electrostatic-like in terms of purity and sheer openness. Female vocals and acoustic guitars are reproduced so naturally and with such emotion that a well recorded album can cause tingles in the spine, and raised hairs on the back of the neck. With vocals, the tweeters also help. Treble is sharp and beautifully defined, yet there is never any hint of spittiness or sibilance, however hard the speaker is pushed.

More importantly than any of these points though, is the Shahinians’ unfathomable ability to just dig out the raw emotion and soul in whatever music they are fed, and throw it at you in a manner which hooks the listener, but always stops short of aggression. Shahinian proudly boast that their speakers are set up and tuned purely by ear, and without the aid of computer measurement. Trust me, the results are spectacular. Even my wife, who has no interest whatsoever in hi-fi has spent hours revisiting her music collection in front of these little crackers. Oh, and they go loud effortlessly with no hint whatsoever of hardening or shout.

Despite the stupendous bass and the slightly forward nature of these speakers, nothing in the sound dominates or spoils anything else. It just plays the music, preserving all of its character, and all of its soul. The music leaps out of the boxes and dances around the room, but the speaker never becomes fatiguing or over the top. Fanatics of sheer accuracy might find room for criticism, but for me, any speaker which gets to the heart of the music in this way, and which requires extreme restraint to sit remotely still in front of demands respect, and is worthy of serious consideration.

Later revisions aren’t quite the swine of a load they once were, but the Arcs do demand decent amplification, especially in terms of bass control. Surprisingly though, this doesn't have to be expensive. If you must have these speakers but your current amp isn't up to it, go find yourself a decent 2nd hand Pioneer A-400 (original, pre-X model) which succeeds brilliantly where some amps costing three times as much fail spectacularly. Despite the price gulf, the sound of the Pioneer on these speakers reminds me why I got into hi-fi in the first place. 30 seconds into a track and my foot is tapping, and my head nodding. I know I’m hearing every ounce of soul and emotion that the artist put into the music. I’m enjoying myself, I’m already a good 20 minutes late for work, yet I really don’t want to leave the room. To my mind, this is exactly what hi-fi should be all about.

soundstaging and overall musicality

retail-price in Germany is like a nightmare

When I first heard the Arcs I just sat there and they made me wonder. What is it? How, or should I say: why do they work? No spikes, no bi-wiring, fuses in the signal-path and a cabinet of funny proportions. I thought: Someone really made up his mind about speakers. Do 99% of all speakermanufacturers go the wrong way?
Introduced in the early 80´s and carefully improved over the years they may not compete with the looks of todays design and lifestyle speakers. But that cannot be a weakness in my opinion, for they just sound better than any speaker I heard before.
You don´t need any of that high-end-vocabulary to describe the Arcs. I got the feeling that music just has to sound like that.They are always a little "charming", that´s for sure. But that could only disturb some pedantic listeners. I would call it "long time listening satisfaction".

I use a powerful and stable Tube-Amp (Pear Audio, a brand of the german distributor of Shahinian, www.pearaudioeurope.si) with the Arcs. Than the miraculous soul of any kind of music associates with all the qualities you achieve with good solid state amps.

Similar Products Used:

B&W (several)and Cabasse

The music

½ year before fully run in.

THIS SPEAKER MUST BE FROM PLANET MARS, ITS...MARVELLOUS !!






Tip:

Do you have any problems with the Arc`s, it`s you`r shi... Hi-Fi system.

Remember, 99% on market today is crap!

What you need is, an Exposure amp/Croft Pre-amp/Nottingham Annalog record player. Wire it with Heybrook Heywire speaker cable and Fletcher 200 signal.


AND DONT SPIKE THE ARK`S !

Similar Products Used:

Heybrook Quartet