As a fellow Shahinian owner of both Obelisks and Diapasons, let me tell you that Shahinian sure does not make the world´s only speakers worthy of listening to. But once you have get used to their omni-/semidirectional acoustical presentation, you may find it very hard or disappointing to go back to a conventional design, such as the Wilson`s. So in your case, make sure you get to hear these speakers first. I go a lot to high end shows, but the only other speakers that would tempt me are other omnidirectional speakers, such as Ohm, MBL or Duevel (with regard to the Obelisk. With the Diapason, in fact, nothing else tempts me). So my advice would be to explore a pair of used Obelisks. If you are patient and search regularly on e-bay (including the US), audiogon and the German audiomarkt.de, you should be able to get a decent pair somewhere between 1500 and 3000 Euros within a few months. Import from the US to the UK will be no problem, duty for used speakers limited. If you want to go even higher, I´d look for used Hawks or Diapasons insted of Wilson/WATTs.
thinking about replacing my Shahinian Arcs with...
I have had my Shahinian Arcs for a few years now and am happy with them but feel it's time for a change / upgrade (familiar feeling huh ;-) ?
At time of writing, I'm looking at used Shahinian Obelisks, Wilson WITT mark 1.
My system (other than by ARC's) comprises of a Musical Fidelity Nu-Vista M3 amp and my front end a MF Tri-Vista 21 DAC with a Sony CDP X-3000 transport.
Will I get a sizeable increase in performance? the system as it is sounds awesome (certainly as good or better than some of what I've seen demo'd at dealers or shows). If there's not gonna be a huge leap in performance It'd probably be better to wait till I have a bigger budget and maybe look at Wilson WATT/PUPPY 3.2. My current budgets about 3grand not taking into account xchange value of my ARC's i'm in the UK.
Any thoughts?