Orions Finished

Reply from: ScottW

Date: 03 May 2008, 22:36

Orions Finished

I've completed my Orion project and spent the last week tweeking and
listening and thought I'd pass along my early impressions. FYI, I
haven't completed the positioning and I'm sure I can gain further
improvement eliminating early rear reflections but for now these are
my impressions.

During setup I played some tracks of a variety of test CDs, one is
Ultimate Audio which has a guy speaking on a mic in middle of room
center. You do get an impression of the size of the room. Then he
steps back 5 feet. Sure enough. Then 10'. Yep, he's back there. Then
15'. Wow, none of my other systems ever had that depth. Now
20'....hmmm a lot like 15 but I haven't even tried to position yet so
that was pretty impressive.

The first thing that struck me on initial music listening was the tone
balance and integration.
Peter Gabriels Mercy Street. Seamlessly smooth with nothing out of
place from bottom to top. Also very clear. Clearer than my Quads.
Some lyrics I would struggle to understand are easy to pick out even
in the midst of many instruments. Individual instruments are also
easier to distinguish. Little things I didn't notice like some faint
percussion background, a castanet or just some scraper are easily
identified. So are flaws, like Madonna puffing into the mic on
Evita.

The active crossover allows for some adjustment of the woofer and
tweeter levels.
At nominal settings at times I feel that some female vocals have a
piercing tendency while others are exquisitely pure. I might tweek it
down a bit but SL and the users group say give it time and creep into
your preference. Another vote for extended listening? :). I'll have
to settle into a room position first. BTW, tweeter crossover is 1545
hz so this isn't your average tweeter.

Other things are painfully apparent like the effects they add to Tori
Amos vocals on almost all her tracks. Only a few tracs is her voice
natural. Her voice isn't that bad...is it? Piano is outstanding
BTW. Sometimes the micing is a bit odd in that the piano must be 40'
long to span that soundstage but the sound is just simply on. Close
mic'd wind instruments have a body to them the quads lack. You can
hear the air moving through the instrument along with the notes.

The first live recording I listened to (something extremely obscure as
Stephen would say, Devil Doll's The Girl Who was Death) is not
something I ever considered well recorded. In fact the opposite.
Well, the span of the sound stage was quite startling. I had the
impression of front row balcony seating with an Orchestra pit below me
and the guitar piano & drums on stage and the choir behind and the
height of the soundstage was well beyond the ceiling of my room. I
haven't even tried to position them properly in my room so this was
impressive. Other recordings I get the feel that the imagery isn't
quite so precise as the Quads (again perhaps the presence of objects
right behind them is giving some early reflection ...I've got 3 sets
of speakers lined up). But the sound stage is extensive. Some
recordings remind me of a low res video played on a big screen. The
image is larger but not sharp in focus.

The other thing I find is they are effortless at producing volume.
Some recordings will lure you to turn it up. There's no point that
I've found where the sound decays in any perceivable way from very low
listening level to live levels Other speakers (like my Legacy's)
would set off my room at these levels but the Orions don't. (Dipole
woofer design I guess). The Quads have obvious limits in SPL and to
some degree, dynamic range, that the Orions simply don't have.
Last night the wife went to hear Snatam Kaur and picked up a few CDs
while there. We listened to one when she got home. She had second
row center seats in a nice small church hall. At home she said it
sounded exactly like the live show. She's not into audio at all, but
this is the first system of mine she said more than a polite "sounds
nice". Obviously I've biased her :).
Anyway I thought that was a pretty interesting comment.

These speakers are accurate and very much true to recordings and give
as live a representation as any I've heard. If there is a drawback to
'em, it's that. These speakers are a blessing on some recordings
revealing their wondrous content and a curse upon others revealing
their flaws. In the past I've said my personal audio nirvana might
not be "perfect accuracy". I've said live isn't what I strive for as
so much live music sounds like crap and so much work is studio
produced in my fav genres that live is meaningless anyway.
So here's the conflict I hear...these speaker can produce a
deceptively real live image.
They can also reveal when the recorded illusion is false. The veil is
gone and the studio production might no longer be an artistically
created representation of a live event but is now obviously cut and
pasted together. The image isn't real, it's a photoshopped collage of
tracs. Instruments occupying the same space. Vocals going out of phase
to create some bizarre image of unrealistic proportion. The effects
to make one voice sound like many no longer decieves.
All the effects in the world can't make Phil Collins sound like Peter
Gabriel..but now all doubt is removed, its now obviously not really
even Phil Collins. I doubt you classic music lovers would have issues
of this nature, but rock and pop does.

Vinyl lovers should be aware of what an open baffle woofer will do
when exposed to the LF noise of vinyl. They will dance their own
little dance. My sub probably did the same to a lesser degree, but I
couldn't see it. The open baffle requires a 1/f sort of slope
drive...so the low freq noise of vinyl causes some serious woofer
displacement even with the typical 15 hz rumble filter on. A 50 hz
hipass (the result is the 1/f slope flattens out some below 50 and
even rolls off lower) option on the crossover helps with little
noticeable impact on sound. If you want vinyl with deep bass (sub 40
hz), you'll probably need a sub like SLs Thor. I haven't noticed any
bass lack on my rock music where sub 40 is rare.
In fact the bass is noticeably superior to my quads & sub and at my
typical listening levels, I don't feel any need. (But I might do the
project just for fun anyway). Art the bass player won't be
bitching...Where's the bass? on Steely Dan Aja....well, on second
thought, maybe he will :).

ScottW