Tweakers' Asylum: Re: Build A Shakti Holograph...well, sort of by Analogon

I understand what your saying. I don't mean to criticize what your hearing as I haven't seen or heard your device. The shape may indeed be the most critical factor of the design as well as the placement, but without comparing your design to the Shakti side by side, it's impossible to say that they are doing the same thing.

As far as having no effect because they are touching anything, well that isn't true in my experience. They are touched by the sound waves themselves â€“ what you hear being a combination of direct and reflected sound. The objects in your room do have a definite influnce on the sound of your system. If it didn't your device would have no effect at all on the sound. It sounds like your contradicting yourself by saying the furnishings in the room have no effect, but your device does.

I've placed very small blocks of wood on the walls of my listening room and believe me they do have an effect on the sound. I have both Ebony and Mahogany blocks in the wall corners at the ceiling and mid points of the corners of the walls and they do effect the sound stage.

We listen to music in rooms filled with both reflective and absorbtive substances which all have an effect on the sound that we hear. Even with near-field listening, it is impossible to avoid these room relection effects entirely.

You said, "If certain kinds of materials imparted certain character to the sound of the system, most people would have to be very careful as to what kind of wood they have near their speakers." Some speaker designers are aware that different woods have different sonic signatures. This is obviously true of the drivers themselves. A metal tweeter and a silk tweeter sound very different as do a metal cone woofer and a paper cone woofer. Every substance has its own resonant frequencies. A predominance of any small range of resonances in your system will degrade the quality of sound.

If the shape of the device is most important as you say in creating the beneficial resonances in the room, than the materials used in the device would tune which resonances are actually produced. This is what I would think would be the difference between what you have achieved and what the Shakti Holograph is supposed to do. Presumably through experimenting, they have found the most pleasing balance of reflected frequencies by using their combination of woods.

I don't mean to be overly critical of your remarks, since that is not what I believe this site should be about. I only think that saying things like "I strongly believe that 99% of what these devices do has to do with the shape and alignment and location" infers that Shakti is just using exotic hardwoods so they can charge $1000 for something you can make for $3. I don't believe this is the case, having used their products and found them effective and unique in their design. You might question whether $1000 is worth sending for the improvement they bring, but if you haven't compared them to your DIY version â€“ how would you know?

I personally wouldn't spend $1000 on a room enhancement that didn't absolutely knock my socks off, but I've never heard the Holograph, so I'm not about to prejudge it. I'm glad your happy with your DIY version. I'm only saying that since you wouldn't have built yours without seeing the Shakti device, it is a little unfair to dismiss the development that went into their product without ever having heard it.

Analogon