Amp for Shahinian Diapasons

bedini, bryston, mac

As you can read here in the archives and on http://groups.yahoo.com/group/shahinianspeakerowners/,
the most important thing for Shahinians is to have an amp which can deliver a lot of current. Otherwise, it will sound far under its potential. This is completely independent from your listening levels. Bedini is no longer the first choice for Shahinian, as a friend of mine and a fellow Diapason-owner found out. Better are e.g. Plinius, Naim, Densen, McIntosh (my choice). I would not start with an amp which delivers less than 150-200 watts with the Diapason. So your best choice is a used, strong amp. I do not think an integrated makes much sense in the long run. Shahinians more than other speakers reward you for really good amplification.

I owned the Diapasons for about 10 years. I used both tube and solid state amps and solid state is the way to go. As Hassel suggests, get an amp with some power. My Metaxas amp was 100W and did fine. The Plinius, Dynavector and Bedini amps are recommended on the Shahinian Acoustics site. Good luck. It's a wonderful speaker.

John Marks in Stereophile (and previously TAS) has always extolled the combination of the Plinius amps with Shahinians, so they are worth an audition.

The last time I spoke with Dick Shahinian (a little over a year ago), he recommended Plinius.