Bright Star Audio, Altair Speaker System - Magnificently Odd

Bright Star Audio, a relative newcomer to the high-end loudspeaker market in 1989, was founded by Barry Kohan, who after 14 years managing a chain of high-end audio salons in the Los Angeles area, decided to go into business for himself. Kohan's previous background as a professional musician and part-time loudspeaker designer prepared him well for this endeavor. His early love of the involving sound produced by dipole-based speakers such as the old ESS AMT 1, which utilized the Heil Air Motion Transformer, challenged him to design a reasonable size, moderate-price, direct-radiator dipole system that would exhibit some of the excellent qualities he remembered.

Kohan started out by selecting a good midrange driver and then working out a unique hidden behind-the-panel mounting scheme that provides a rounded sound-radiating aperture to minimize interference and diffraction. The de sired dipole nature of the system dictated that the back of the midrange be open to radiate freely to the rear. To provide dipole radiation at the highest frequencies, and knowing that no high-quality bidirectional direct-radiator tweeters were available, he added a rear-mounted tweeter, wired with reversed polarity. To keep the system of reason able size, true dipole radiation was sacrificed at the low end, where a quasi-closed-box system with a highly damped rear port was used. To acoustically align the drivers for coherent time response, the baffle was tilted back.

This process eventually lead to the unusual design of the Altair system. On first sight it looks like none that you have seen before. It is a tall, truncated pyramid coated with a granite-like material. The three circular shapes on the front panel locate the system's drivers, but closer examination reveals no obvious means of driver attachment, only gentle rounded surfaces. The lower two drivers, the woofer and midrange, are protected by rigid metal-screen grilles. The tapering enclosure minimizes the baffle area around each driver, improving dispersion.

All exposed surfaces, including the bottom and inside top rear of the cabinet, are covered with a quite good-looking granite-like material that leaves no evidence of the underlying wooden construction. In addition, all corners and edges of the structure are rounded to minimize diffraction. The shape of the enclosure means that none of the walls are parallel to each other, which reduces the effect of internal standing waves and strengthens the assembly. The ex posed wiring of the tweeter and midrange is dressed and treated very tastefully, with shrink-wrap tubing over the soldered driver terminals and tie-downs.

The bottom rear of the cabinet had separate input terminal cups for the woofer and midrange/tweeter connections, with short pairs of heavy Tara Labs cable provided to link the cups for single wiring. Units now in production have all the connections in a single cup, with heavy go d-plated straps instead of cable links. A fiberglass-filled Scan-Speak aperiodic loading chamber (a type of vent active only when cabinet pressure exceeds a preset level), 4 inches in diameter, is mounted above the terminal cups. 

The crossover of the Altair is wired point-to-point on a piece of 3/8-inch-thick particleboard mounted to the bottom of the enclosure. It contains 16 parts (two inductors, nine capacitors, and five resistors), though paralleling reduces the effective capacitor count to four. The design of the crossover consists of all first-order, 6 dB/octave networks for the midrange and tweeters plus a second-order, 12-dB/octave low-pass filter for the woofer. The midrange is connected via a second-order, series-connected LC bandpass filter, which functions as a 6-dB/ octave cascaded high-pass/low-pass combination. Bright Star states that they hand-match the crossover components between right and left speakers to within 1%. The piezo rear tweeter is driven through a series RC network that serves both to set level and provide protective high-frequency current limitation. The connections to the woofer part of the crossover and the midrange/tweeter portion are brought out separately to the rear of the cabinet to allow bi-wiring.

So here we have the decidedly quirky Altair Speaker System complete with optional Bass EQ. We were skeptical at first as to what type of wizardry these odd teepees might possess and on first blush, weren't expecting much... boy, were we wrong. The Altair system has a totally well rounded full range sonic package. They image like champs and are  100% an amazing setup. Not a lot of these were produced and there are few remaining intact & complete systems in the market making them pretty rare and special. Kinda a gotta hear them to appreciate all they offer sort or situation but boy, every around the shop is impressed. Easy to drive so comparable with a wide range of electronics. Solid 8+/9 in condition all-around.

Come have a listen at the Andover shop or buy with confidence via this site.

Shining Star Audio, Altair Speaker System; $899 plus tax ans shipping when applicable 

* Steel Foundations Stands NOT Included but are available for purchase @ $249