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I replace the Oris 150's with the Orphean horns. These are coaxial midrange and tweeter compression drivers in a single 220 Hz horn. They are being used with a small 10" Onken bassbin that has 100W of SS power. The Orphean horns are 112 dB sensitive and it can still handle about 80W of power.They are the most dynamic speaker I have heard in a home environment. They are as transparent as electrostatics, I swear. Maybe even more so because I can use my super transparent 45 SET amp with them which is more transparent than I've heard from high powered OTL amps driving SoundLab electrostatics.
There are some horn colorations at this point - they are brand new and not "broken in" yet. I hope they do break in a little bit. Even with just 3 hours of use there was a noticeable change in their sound for the better. It's been said that they will start to get worse before the end up sounding better. I've had that happen to me before with speakers. Bert Doppenberg says they will take only 25 hours to finish break-in on these to where it's "good enough" to listen to.
Well, I'm impressed by these speakers. For more information on the drive unit used, see the link. The ones used for the Orphean horns are modified BMS 4592ND units.
Follow Ups:
Kurt,I must have got my new Orpheans around the same time you did.
Mine have about 14 hours on them.
They are just so damn killer! Iron fist in the velvet glove and all that...
Regarding your comments about dynamics, I think they would have absolutely no problem passing Tom Brennan's Ben Hur test. :)
On a similar note, I've been playing with "wideband" compression drivers from 200hz to 5Khz with a tweeter above 5K. XO is active 24db/octave. I get most of the advantages of fullrange drivers plus the dynamics, efficiency and headroom of horns. I've been listening to this rig more than my Fertins -- this weekend anyway, I've got one channel with the horns and one channel with the FR drivers -- which is NOT something I could say about the Altec 288B crossed at 800hz, a very typical setup. Definitely some integration oddities between the horn and 15" woofers at 200hz however.Especially for those who want a more horn-like high power presentation, and if you have a large room and live where you can turn it up, I'd look down this path. It seems to me like a BIG plus to get midrange instruments and vocals all on one driver rather than trying to split them down the middle, especially trying to split vocals between two wildly dissimilar drivers like a 15" paper cone woofer and a compression driver.
Anyway, if you like fullrange cone drivers the sound is familiar. Usually when I hear typical horn systems crossed around 1000hz with speaker-level XO, it sounds good until I return to a FR, and then I lose interest.
Getting appropriate drivers is the trick. Most everything out there is made to cross in the 800hz-1500hz range. This is probably one thing in favor of the RCA MI-1428B -- it runs from 300hz to 5K+. What if we ended up back with the WE 555 -- a wideband compression driver running from 100hz to 5K? With today's electronic delay circuits, integration might be a bit easier than it was then. Maybe Steve Schell could make us something.
The BMS coaxials go very much down this path and it would be interesting to look into modifying them to go lower (200hz XO for example). In the home environment they would not likely be running more than about 125mW average and 2W peaks, compared to 20W with 200W peaks for prosound use, so that might not be too much of a problem. I was rocking the block at 1V average which is about 60mW on the 16 ohm drivers.
Hi Kurt,Congratulations with your new speakers!
I have a "poor man's version" of those, which means the standard (non-modified) BMS 4592 in a large 200 Hz horn. I many respects mine are good too, but I have trouble getting rid of some harshness in the treble, which I am sure you do not have. I really regret that I didn't wait and saved up for the Orphean...
Regards
Peter
> I have a "poor man's version" of those, which means the standard (non-modified) BMS 4592 in a large 200 Hz horn. I many respects mine are good too, but I have trouble getting rid of some harshness in the trebleThe relative harshness might be in the horns and/ or the drivers.
The BMS 4592s are very well regarded, so I would have thought more likely the horns - what are your 200 Hz horns?I also have the standard BMS 4592s, anyone know what Bert did other than the phase plug, which I would have thought primarily affected dispersion?
Hi Rick57,Thanks for your reply!
I have a pair of Bentwood 200 horns. They are rectangular 200 Hz horns with an exponential flare.
I have attached a few pictures of the system including the Bentwood horns in the link below. The transition from the circular throat of the horn adaptor to the rectangular section is not quite optimal (although not a disaster either).
I do not know about what Bert D. has done to the standard BMS, and I know that he will not give away his secrets, which I fully understand since he makes a living selling horn speakers. My best quess is that he might have added some cloth inside the driver in order to damp reflections from the BMS high section - but it is only a guess...
Which horns are you using, and are you satisfied with the highs?
Thanks!
Regards
Peter
"I have a "poor man's version" of those, which means the standard (non-modified) BMS 4592 in a large 200 Hz horn. I many respects mine are good too, but I have trouble getting rid of some harshness in the treble, which I am sure you do not have. I really regret that I didn't wait and saved up for the Orphean..."Bert did a lot of good work developing the Orpheans. He has a phase plug in there for starters. He also has a carefully designed crossover. To help you there you might want to get the tweeter crossover capacitor changed to an oil type. That might help.
Kurt
Hi Kurt,Thanks for the answer and for the tip regarding paper/oil caps. Happy listening, I am sure the Orpheans do sound great!
of the passive one developed by Bert ?
The passive crossover is of very high quality, and you can even opt for silver foil caps at a $1K or so premium. The crossover is a first order type designed with all the equalization, etc. built in. An active crossover and bi-amping (or tri-amping even with bass bins) is there as a possibility if you throw out all the passive crossover components yourself, and then you have to engineer a crossover yourself.Maybe Bert can sell you one without the built-in crossover. I just don't see the advantage myself. Even the high end cap choice is cheaper than adding another high quality amp and passive crossover. One good amp with one voice from 220 Hz - 20 KHz seems right for this speaker, and another SS amp for the bass bins. That's just my opinion, of course.
You can tell us more about the differences between the Oris 150 horns (which I have; maybe one day I can upgrade?) and the Orpean horns? And what driver did you use with the Oris 150 horns?
"You can tell us more about the differences between the Oris 150 horns (which I have; maybe one day I can upgrade?) and the Orpean horns? And what driver did you use with the Oris 150 horns?"Well, I can't make a real up-to-date comparison. First, my old Oris 150 drivers were AER modified Lowther PM4A. The new drivers for Oris are a few to select from, all newly designed by AER for BD-Design. I never heard those.
Also, my speakers aren't broken in yet and there's some tweak adjustments I needed to make, but I can say with certainty some comparisons:
First, there is more dynamics and dynamic range with the Orpheans. I mean they have startling dynamics with a seemingly endless effortless high end to the SPL. The Oris horn is very good at dynamics, way above the average speaker, but these Orpheans are in the next league.
Second, there is no upward tilt to the balance of the sound in the Orphean that is there in the Oris. A little passive equalization is useful for the Oris but not at all needed for the Orphean (there's a full crossover with some equalizing effort built into the Orphean, but the Oris is run straight in with no crossover).
The distortion in the Orphean is very low. It exposes the source and amps completely, and the Oris places a slight veil over it. The Oris has a "paper-like" sound to it, where you can tell it's from a paper cone, if you're familiar with that. That's not a bad thing, mind you. The Orphean sometimes will sound a little "plastic-like", but only a little, and only sometimes. This seems to come and go and I think more of it will go as it breaks in. I'm counting on that.
The Orpheans when playing James Carter saxophone music at loud levels just blew me away last night. It was just a CD, not LP or SACD, but the power of his playing and the tone was simply astonishing to me. I used to demo this to people on my Avantgarde DUOs to show off this amazing midrange, but the Orpheans are again way ahead of the DUOs there. The sound was even more open and more effortless. Well, those DUOs had a sensitivity of about 103 dB and now here's the Orphean at 112 dB. That sensitivity number is seemingly important to how it handles high SPLs with low distortion - it seems to follow, and the Orpheans sound an order of magnitude ahead of the DUOs like its sensitivity numers are.
That about sums it up for now. With just 1W of power, you have a loud and clear stereo with these Orphean horns.
Thanks for the description.I hope to hear James Carter in person next month when he comes to New Orleans for the Jazz Festival, for an even more dynamic sound!
hi Kurtcongratulations for your purchase of the orpheans. I think they are amongst the best someone can buy, and price is very fair indeed. I listen them for abought 5 month now. I bought a SET amp at CES2007, wich retails for us$9900,00, to drive them, and tried a Trend's TA10 ClassT amp just for fun, as it costs a mere us$100,00. The improove with the Trends was giant, it's pure joy to listen music now. I can recomend you to try it out, it's really worth it. I will soon buy a RedWine30, as it seems it is even better than the Trends.
Thanks for the idea.
Use valves as soon as you can afford,
your speakers should deserve them.
Good luck, and let us know about the sound.
Vincent
"Use valves as soon as you can afford,
your speakers should deserve them."I am using all valves on the horns: 01A -> 45, single-ended triode, less than 1W/ch. And it still plays enormously loud in my house.
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