The Diapason Prelude I was the beginning of everything, back in 1987. Alessandro Schiavi, the Diapason founder and president, was just a young teen when he was starting his journey in classical live music recording. Still at a very young age he became the official recording technician of the “Festival Pianistico Internazionale” held in the Brescia’s “Teatro Grande”.
He had all the necessary equipment but he desperately needed a reliable mixing monitor; unsatisfied with what was available back then he decided to build up a speaker fulfilling his needs playing around two iconic speaker units: the Seas mid-woofer P14 RCY and the Audax tweeter HD100 D25.
The resulting loudspeaker system’s cabinet was realized in solid chestnut wood with a baffle covered with natural leather, it was 100% ear tuned. It is interesting to point out that the tweeter needed to be sweetened – according to Alessandro taste – and he came out with an intuitive but yet effective solution: placing a tiny arc across the diaphragm, in a vertical fashion and positioning in it a tiny refractor, avoiding this way direct emission while spreading the relative acoustic energy all around. The result was a sweeter treble combined with an amazing staging ability. Back then Alessandro had a tiny control room on the Gran Teatro’s proscenium arch: musicians were used to step in listening to the recordings and being amazed by the Prelude I sound. The Diapason journey was just began.
