Shakti Innovations

Shakti: Innovation or scam?

Shakti Innovations is a company thats been around since 1994. The primary product is the noise reduction technology invented by Ben Piazza, who just keeps coming up with clever uses for his creation. The Shakti stone is an Electromagnetic Stabilizer, a piece of equipment they claim can absorb and dissipate electromagnetic interference generated by our audio/visual and even automotive equipment that hinders performance.

(what's this?)

Advertiser Links for Shakti Innovations

These stones are basically flat square rocks that you would place on or near your audio equipment; it sucks that pesky errant RF right out of the air around your equipment, absorbing a broad spectrum of EMI. This results in cleaner sound reproduction from your audio kit. Shakti describes more liquid dynamics and focus and improved inter-transient silence. Placing these stones near your video equipment will even bring out video quality, reduce color noise and improve convergence alignment.

Shakti stones will even improve performance in your automobile, so race car drivers should start using them too. Shakti says: Horsepower gain is the direct result of Shaktis attenuation of EMI in the ECU. The On-Line version of the Shakti Stone was placed on each of the coils of a Chevy Tahoe and it showed an improvement of nearly four tenths of a second in the zero to sixty. The On-Line is a Shakti Stone shaped to fit on cables and wires. These cost $100 each and should be placed over audio cables, speaker wires and apparently even spark plug wires for your car. The stone itself is a flat square stone you could use to tile your front walk; they cost $230 each. Place these above and below your audio and video equipment.

The latest product from the Shakti mill is the Hallograph Soundfield Optimizer, the result of ten years of scientific research. These are stands you place out in your listening area that will add depth to your listening area. Theyre especially good if youve got a smaller room. Placing these along the outer perimeter of the listening area will present a realistic stage depth, width and height. They cost only $1000 a pair.

Where to begin? We cant say weve actually tried these products, so perhaps this isnt a proper review but merely a preview. The best that can be said for this company is that the claims are imaginative and bold indeed. For these to have any audible effect on your audio system as they claim, your system would have to suffer from some audible interference in the first place.

If these stones are affecting the audible and visible performance, what is preventing it from having detrimental performance? If its sucking out electromagnet frequencies from my system, how is this effect limited to the ones that supposedly interfere? What about the normal operation of the component? Electronic components make use of electromagnetic induction and transformers as a necessary part of proper operation.

If the Shakti stone really sucked out electromagnetism from your component then your power supplies transformer would stop working. Electromagnetism causes current to flow from one coil to the next between the primary/secondary coils of a power transformer. It would be an impressive feat if a Shakti stone could be made to truly dampen all EMF in an area outside of the stone itself. Sure, materials can be made to filter out electromagnetism (block it) but drawing it out of the air is another matter.

This looks and smells like a scam. Maybe Ben Piazza believes what he says is true but we dont.