Enclosed for my perusal were two Stones and two pair of On-Lines, the latter now sporting snazzy product markings of reflective foil in an aesthetic evolution from the plain black On-Lines I had purchased a few years back. Having never even laid eyes upon a Shakti Stone live and in person before, my initial reaction was that they were both larger and lighter than I had assumed from photographs. Ben included a generous package of technical and promotional literature, but no customized suggestions about how I might proceed in installing his products in my system. Protocol, then, was mine to establish.


I began by calibrating my ears to the sound of the system as it had stood for several weeks, VPI Brick in place-of-honor on the amp's output transformers. Then I spent time reacquainting myself with the character of the rig sans Brick. It was from this clean palate that I began slipping the Shakti devices into the proceedings. First item in was one Stone, placed on the amp where the db-5 had been. As I settled in for some wrong-side-of-the-brain listening, I was reading, for a second time, the instructions that had come packed with each Stone.


I mention that this was the second reading because something got my attention that had somehow snuck by me on the initial scan: When used on the output transformers of a tube amp as I was doing, the instructions recommend that the Stone be elevated off the transformer itself by the use in all four corners of ½" spacers of unspecified variety - or by On-Lines, expensive "spacers" to be sure. As it happened, my magic bag of "better not throw this out 'cause you never know" audio odds'n'ends was immediately to hand and provided four convincing spacer candidates of high impact plastic that were about perfect for this application. So with apologies to Maidenform, lift and separate I did.


Stone #1 so settled, I began to A/B the first several measures of a few tracks I had selected based on very good, very crisp but not over-the-top audiophile production values and the wide dynamic and tonal ranges of these tunes in particular (don't know about you, fellow traveler, but I tend to glaze over like yesterday's Krispy Kreme when the writer, as they always do, goes into mind-numbing detail about the musical selections used for evaluation - right down to Library of Congress catalog numbers and the digital counter position of certain cymbal hits. Won't happen here).


First impressions were of the Stone's temperate nature. Unlike the nearly smack-on-the-forehead effect produced by adding the VPI Brick, the Shakti Stone seemed to be offering an outcome that was comparable yet altogether more encompassing up and down the frequency range. I want to keep any comparisons between these two very different products to a minimum, but I think it natural that, in this situation, the first thing I'd process would be a hasty comparison, involuntary or not. And where the Brick had made its presence known in an obvious way in the lower frequencies, the Stone eschewed such showmanship in favor of more holistic approach.


It took a bit longer to fully appreciate - but make no mistake, where the Shakti Stone is concerned, there is a there there. I have already described the Brick as having the effect of "untangling" denser musical selections. In the case of the Stone, I'll take that numerous notches further by suggesting that it brought a new level of eloquence, of articulation to my system and all the software I could feed it. Pings were pingier, thwacks were thwackier and the air between notes was deepier and blackier (something tells me that quote won't be apprehended for an ad anytime soon). This was a result that would only grow more pronounced as, one at a time, I introduced the other Shakti products to the mix.


As the sessions progressed, I grew impatient with the small extra effort required to balance Stone #1 on my homemade spacers and reverted to placing it directly on the transformer cover, instructions be damned. Lo and behold, the sound improved still further. For whatever reason, this tube amp responded better with its Stone in direct contact, fully coupled. Then I remembered a not-so-insignificant detail: When I had first added the VPI Brick to the system, that sudden blooming of bass became, after the initial novelty rush, slightly too much of a good thing. The volume setting of my subwoofer amp (Dayton-Dickason Titanic/Parts Express) is normally set very low to begin with. With the low freqs goosed as they were by the Brick, I had ended up de-compensating by turning it down even more, barely at the 7 o'clock position, with 6 being an unambiguous off. Armed with this memory breakthrough (hey, I've led a hard life), I reached behind the sub and ever so delicately eased that volume knob north towards 7.5 on the dial. This closed the gap. Now the sound retained its newfound clarity of expression in the mids and highs while showing me a proper measure of confidence on the bottom end as well.


Stone #2 was placed above where I'm reasonably sure the power supply is in my CD player (I should note that for ease of management, sonic consistency and shift-on-the-fly maneuverability, I only used my digital source for the listening involved with this series). Starting life as a top-o-line Pioneer Elite model, this CDP had been modded for pro studio use, given a new faceplate and slew of input/output options by MMb and, in the process, was granted a pretty serious copper-clad chassis. For this last reason, I wasn't expecting much. And not much was just what I got, until I followed instructions and started moving the Stone around on the top plate, listening for any changes. By the time the Stone was directly over the transport mechanism, we were in business. In fact it wasn't long before I decided that, had I only a single Stone, over the CD transport it would likely reside. But luckily, I had two to fiddle with - if luck is what you can call it when you realize that you'll be writing Ben Piazza a chubby check. Did I say this job was "turning out to be fun" a while back? I should add, "If you can afford it".


In, or rather on, with the On-Lines. In an effort to apply them to the pathways that would see the most active duty, I affixed one at the recommended mid-point of each speaker cable (AudioQuest Mammoth) and the second pair went on each end of the amp's power cord (Virtual Dynamics Basic Power). I could do this without the anxiety of commitment due to the thoughtful inclusion of little dabs of blue tack on the back of each On-Line, making it convenient to experiment with their locations before fixing their positions with the more permanent Velcro backing. Yet my nonaligned On-Lines karma persisted. Any effect of these particular Shakti offerings continued to largely elude me.


I moved the On-Lines to the in/out positions of the interconnects running from the CDP (Signal Cable Analog IIs with Eichman Bullets), still without discernable consequence. Until, that is, I moved a set back to the power cord. Wasn't that a difference? It was, wasn't it? It was then, after several days of Shakti plural in the system, that I knew I had to peel the onion back a layer at a time in order to really know -- or at least almost sorta kinda know -- what was going on in that listening room.



"How did it all fall apart?
Slowly at first, then all of a sudden."
[Jay McInerney - Bright Lights, Big City]

Taking one black box -- large variety and small -- out of the system one at a time over the course of a couple hours is a brain and ear-boiling exercise. Or I should say exorcism? At once completed, the best thing I could do was pack in the discs for the day and cleanse my sensory preceptors with a dose of the real world, listening again to the now Shakti-free setup only when I had aired out my head. Because, let me tell you comrade, by this point Alice here was 10 foot tall.


A day or so later, and again one at a time, every unit found its way back in. It's like this: if your experience with audio is anything at all like mine, you know that there are times when, for no apparent reason let alone any reason you can quantify and wrest to your will, the rig Just Sounds Great. It's at those times my inner bore starts wishing some curious dinner guest was on hand to be wowed by the sheer hi-fi of it all. Well, at the risk of sounding more like a real person than a vigilantly coherent writer, the clearest thing I can say is that the fully Shakti-fied system sounded like that all the time.


My findings, in my room, with my gear and all that other half-assed caveat throat-clearing, were that the Stones provided a system enhancement on the order of equipment upgrade magnitude, and the On-Lines contributed to this whole but only when used in tandem with the Stones and in a far subtler way; one that signals their absence more than trumpeting their arrival. Got that? No? Tough. This ain't supposed to be a review anyway, remember?


Suffice to say the Stones are back in their original positions (amp and CDP) as are the On-Lines (power cord and speaker cable). Now this isn't, heaven forefend, a Home Theater magazine, but I also plan to try the On-Lines on the main cables of my plasma display, thinking it conceivably easier for me to see than to reliably hear what those Steak-Fry-sized wire warts are up to. Which is perfectly kosher, as not only audio but video and even automotive applications are flagged as usage opportunities on the On-Lines packaging. So if I roll a dud on the TV, I'll pop open the bonnet of the MGA, strap those suckas to the distributor cap and see what I can't do about scaring up a speeding ticket or two. All of which should illustrate the extent to which I'm committed to giving each product in this saucy survey a full and balanced hearing, seeing or even driving if need be. I'll report back in coming episodes.

Lastly, my experience certainly puts the truth to Shakti's advice to keep trying different locations with both the Stones and the On-Lines until you hit pay dirt. Because just like those high school make-out sessions, when you finally get to third, you'll know.


Now what about that evergreen saw, "faith-dependant, ceremonial listening aids?" At least by Ben Piazza's recollection, it was coined by Barry Willis in Stereophile sometime in the mid 90s; and yes, it was in the context of a Shakti review. But a little bit of knowledge is dangerous thing indeed, grasshopper. Because the line was used not to describe what Shakti is, but rather what the writer felt, very strongly, that Shakti is not. It was used to distinguish Shakti from those products that, because of their sharing a passive approach (but nothing else) with Piazza's work, ended up either parasitically basking in Shakti's halo or piddling in Shakti's punch bowl. The spirit of the original usage of the phrase was that Shakti was too often unfairly grouped with accessories of the faithful sort. Put that in your ceremonial treaty pipe and puff a while, chief.


"Curiouser and curiouser!"
[Lewis Carroll - Alice's Adventures, Chapter II, The Pool of Tears]

Alice had her own problems (the biggest one perhaps being pervy penman Lewis himself), but where will Chapter II of this excursion lead? If it is to my very own "Pool of Tears" I cannot now say, but curiouser and curiouser I can all but guarantee. Because what comes after Bricks and Stones if not Pebbles and Gems? But not without first stopping at what may be the physical world's last castle - those ebony cloisters at the acknowledged boundary of earthly wisdom known as Shun Mook.


Until then, keep the horses watered, the blankets dry and your mind as open as your ears.
Ben Piazza adds a comment:
The only correction is the following where I was slightly misunderstood to say:
"Our designs actually get rid of that interference by dissipating it completely".

One could misread this to mean that Shakti Innovations is claiming to completely remove all the EMI any given component might have. Nothing can do that. I had explained that other approaches had some coupling potential with EMI but there was no circuit element in them to maximize the conversion to non-interfering energy. Under the laws of hysteresis, there will always be some minimal dissipation when a passive device is inductively coupled with an active field. Just how much will actually dissipate is highly variable unless there is a dedicated part to the circuit that acts as a resistor.

What Jim based on the wording leading up to that quote is trying to do is, I believe, draw some distinctions between Shakti technology and other products in the same genre. To clarify, Shakti does not completely dissipate all EMI, but the dissipation of those fields it does couple with (absorb) is more effective because each sophisticated broad-spectrum filter (3 in the Stone) has a highly absorptive stage and a dedicated resistive (dissipative) element. That provides a greater degree of EMI conversion to non-interfering heat. In electrical engineering terminology, Shakti units have a high Q of absorption and a low Q of dissipation, the result being less artifacts in the music signal.

Another distinction is that all of this is accomplished without Ferrite or other filtering that would have to be placed in the signal path, an approach that has audible trade-offs. Jim asked me to share any history of tweekdom I might recall. Here's one that relates. In the 1970s, a
Feathered but not tarred, Jim Bosha is properly attired to receive cosmic radiations yet shielded from leaking out good ideas
talented engineer named Mitch Cotter sold a ton of EMI reduction devices that were all the rage and did truly reduce EMI. They were placed between all your components in the low-level signal path. Within a year of their introduction, the same reviewers and users who had championed their startling reduction of EMI were now casting them aside. Over time it became apparent that realistic treble response was compromised because low pass filters inherently attenuate high frequency information. The goal Mitch set was an admirable one and did demonstrate how eliminating EMI was of value. It just was not quite there in execution along the path of "infinite compromise" that wields its power so often in the engineering pursuit of perfection in music reproduction.

I guess all of my long-winded clarification could be summarized to: "We don't claim total elimination of EMI, just a more highly sophisticated and thorough broad-spectrum design that will get more artifacts out of the music signal's way.

Ben Piazza
Shakti Innovations
Shakti Innovations website
VPI website