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In Reply to: Orion speaker: any new owners who share opinion? read archives: Fatiguing or not? posted by soundquest on October 14, 2005 at 07:45:45:
The Orions are the least fatiguing speakers I have ever owned. Multi-hour sessions usually leave me wishing I could spend even more time listening.
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I heartily second this as well.Amp "refinement" doesn't seem to be an issue with the Orions. Competence, yes, refinement, no. The design, drivers, and ASP as so superb that they'd probably sound better than most speakers if driven by late 60s vintage transistor amps.
I settled on four Hafler TA1600 60wpc stereo amps after mixing and matching a half dozen amps to each channel. The Haflers seem to have come off assembly lines with poor QC, so I now wish I'd bought the ATI amp, but for reasons other than sound.
Preamp is passive (250K pot), so I added a buffer/follower before the ASP's inputs to keep the signal from rolling off into the 10K inputs.
You will be flirting with disaster if you put more than 60 watts on each woofer. You're much better off clipping the amp than bottoming the woofers. And unlike a passively-crossed over speaker, if the bass amp clips, the harmonics won't fry your tweeters.
I second that. I've owned mine for the same time and thoroughly enjoy listening. Never a sense of fatigue, only an engaging musical experience and a wish for more.
What amps are you two guys using with your Orions? Siegfried Linkwitz recommends an ATI 12-channel amp, which sells for about $1650. Not peanuts, but inexpensive in the context of the amps usually raved about on these boards.
I am using a Rotel RMB-1048 amp with my Orions. It was about half the price of the ATI but only has 40 watts a channel into 8ohms. In my room it works fine. The only issue I have is with some DVD movie soundtracks the bass channel will sometimes overload for a second. Generally I just use the Linkwitz EQ/XO infrasonic switch to cut off the lowest frequencies and that stops the clipping. As to fatigue, the Orions are absolutely the best speaker I have ever heard and I now find myself listening to music much more than I have in years.
I'm using the ATI 1806 (6x180 watts) and have had excellent results. It is less expensive than the ATI 6012 (12x60 watts) that SL prefers. The two woofers in each speaker are in parallel on one amp. I want the extra power in the bass range and believe the overall distortion is lower with the 1806 since you use a smaller fraction of the total rated amplifier power to achieve the same volume. One does have to be careful not to over-apply the power to avoid damaging the speakers with the 180w capability. However, full concert volume is reached using a fraction of full amplifier output, with no problems. I've noticed that some recordings have extraneous low frequency (sub-sonic) information on them which causes large, inaudible but visible, woofer excersions which in combination with heavy bass passages, could damage the bass drivers. SL has provided a low frequency cut-out in the x-over that can be switched on to eliminate this problem.
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