My first Shindo experience...

[Puma Cat]

Last Sunday my friend Gregory and I went over to hear my friend David's full Shindo system.

I helped him set it up a few weeks ago, but we couldn't get sound out of one of the amps. Turned out it had a volume control that was turned down (though the volume control is neither positioned where one would expect, nor looks anything like, a volume control).

Anyway my friend David got Matt at Pitch Perfect to help him get it sussed, and we had a nice listening session at David's house.

Here's a pic of the system in the Lingolab cabinet...



Monbrison preamplifier complete with phono stage, and Lafon monoblocks. All in gorgeous condition. The CD/SACD player at left is an Esoteric (X-05, I believe) which sounds bloody fantastic.

Speakers are Altec speakers in a furniture style cabinet with a large paper cone and horn tweeter/mid, and redone by Shindo himself (IIRC, Shindo made improvements to the crossover). Auditorium interconnects and speaker cables, and Shindo power cables throughout connected to a Mr T power distributor.

Overall, the music was magical, and very easy to listen to for hours on end. The midrange and musicality of this system are absolutely gorgeous and to die for, and there is a real presence and you are there quality that is pretty wonderful. Acoustic jazz and voice are very special on this system. Also the system has a large and spacious presentation, so it doesn't matter where you sit, you get great sound. David and I preferred sitting way back from the speakers, while Gregory tended to sit in the classic equilateral triangle sweet spot. But, it didn't matter where you sat, it sounded wonderful. With the initial setup, I thought there was a bit of smearing of the upper bass/lower mids so we played with sliding the Altecs out from the wall (they were pretty close to the wall initiallyk), and it was remarkable how much difference it made. You could slide the speakers out or back an inch and hear a difference. We ended up with a position where the speakers were probably 4 inches or so farther out from the wall than originally, and this seemed to give the best blend of bass/lower mids clarity/articulation and midrange/highs performance.

I don't think we played any hard rock per se, but some Smoke Fairies and Grateful Dead/Jerry Garcia, a lot of jazz and jazz vocal content.

Regarding system shortcomings, only a few: I would say that the bass could be a bit below 50Hz could tighter, better articulated and more defined. We used a spectrum analyzer on our iPhones and there wasn't much output below 50 Hz. On full-scale classical, e.g. Berlioz' Symphony Fantastique, there was a bit of congestion in terms of rendering orchestral instruments cleanly during dynamic passages. I attribute this to the fact that 8 watt SETs just can't quite muster enough grunt to fully render this type of content absolutely cleanly and with all instruments fully and separately delineated when things get REALLY dynamic. You do need some horsepower to play full-on classical, methinks. I think power pentodes are probably better here than SET amps, or a big, but sweet, SS amp, like a Pass, Premier 350 or Burmester. If you listen to jazz or small ensemble classical or solo or small ensemble voice, though, this is the system is for you 'cause the mids are gorgeous. We also listened a Janos Starker classical cello recording that sounded very beautiful, with excellent rendering of the ambience of the hall "space".

While the Altec/Shindo speakers do not sound anything like horn speakers at all, on some specific content, e.g. male voice, I noticed a slight "chestiness" to the sound that I attribute to a large, fairly flexy cabinet. Love to hear this system with some DeVores or Zu speakers.

Whatever departures from neutrality or colorations this system has, they are all very musical and euphonic, so the overall listening experience is very pleasurable indeed. It's very much a curl up on the couch and just enjoy the music kind of system.

And at the end of the day, that's what it's all about.