My week with the Orions, or 'why do we bother'

[otto88]

> I'm quite surprised no one had cloned the Physics CS2 or something alike

http://www.audiocircle.com/circles/i...&topic=53821.0

[Joel Wesseling]

I heard the Orions with subs a few years ago and was impressed except I thought the midrange, human voice especialy, was thin. It was a strange set up where the person was using a digital processor so I dont know if I really heard them properly,

Do any of you find the human voice lacks weight or body?

I think the whole "sprayorama" dipole/omni thing is inherently inaccurate, and it shows. But it is a very pleasant
sound effect.

I was expecting to hear the omni effect that creates vague image placement but what I heard was a point source that I love and crave for so above quote is interesting?

NEM NEVER ENOUGH MUSIC

[Horizons]

Originally posted by gainphile

The middle of the road between design and implementation is 'cloning'. With DSP available I'm quite surprised no one had cloned the Physics CS2 or something alike. I mean how easy it is to have discussions by sending panel dimensions, few cheap drivers, and a DCX config file!

I agree 100%. Cloning with minor tweaks and improvements is the best of both worlds. However, I am on my own with the DCX config file for the CS2. I have not been able to get my hands on it as everyone considers this proprietary. Not sure you can call settings on a pro xover/EQ proprietary though.

[Drew Eckhardt]

Originally posted by Joel Wesseling
I heard the Orions with subs a few years ago and was impressed except I thought the midrange, human voice especialy, was thin. It was a strange set up where the person was using a digital processor so I dont know if I really heard them properly,

Do any of you find the human voice lacks weight or body?

Mine sound great to me. Stock Linkwitz analog ASP built on SL's boards; tube (Marantz 7C), analog (Lexicon DC-1 zone 2), and digital (Lexicon DC-1 main zone) preamps tried. I heard one other pair that were OK in the midrange although the owner had something odd going on that was clearly a room effect.

I was expecting to hear the omni effect that creates vague image placement but what I heard was a point source that I love and crave for so above quote is interesting?

People look at a dipole and think "Ah! You can see drivers on both sides, so there's more off-axis sound than a conventional speaker" but this is wrong for total power response at lower frequencies (4.8dB lower for a dipole at a given on-axis SPL than a conventional speaker) and front hemisphere off-axis energy at all frequencies

Empirically, you can look at what happens to the image shift when a monural dipole (classic jazz recordings with instruments entirely in one speaker are easy) moves a couple feet from to a side wall - it doesn't make it halfway to the end of the tweeter flange even with the original Orion single tweeter configuration and toe-in pointed at the listener (extra toe-in is better). In an asymmetric room layout with a couple feet to a wall on one side and none on the other with toe-in pointing in front of the listener the sound stage doesn't drift appreciably (I had to use the Marantz stereo tone controls to get things balanced in a room which merely had bookshelves on one wall with a pair of stand-mounted monitors).

Measurements support this even at high frequencies. John Krevosky measured his NaO with rear tweeter option. Through 2-5KHz the 90 degree off-axis energy is 10dB down compared to a single front-firing tweeter, and there's still a5dB difference by the time you get to 10KHz.


http://www.musicanddesign.com/NaO-II-F-R-twe.html


Or you can look at the simple math of it. At lower (all but the last human vocal octave?) frequencies you have a cosine alpha polar response (20 log angle) - -3dB at 45 degrees, -6dB at 60, theoretically nothing at 90 degrees but the path lengths aren't equal so you don't get perfect cancelation.

You can go from that to what happens to the reflections in a typical room. I ran the numbers for my first room - 13x19x8', speakers on a short wall 4' off the front and 8' apart, listening position 11' off the front wall, 30 degree toe-in.

First reflections calculate at

front wall 8ms delay, -6dB attenuation from distance, 19 degrees
229 degrees off-axis total
dipole difference: -3.7dB
total attenuation: -9.7dB

ceiling 4ms delay, -3.5dB attenuation from distance, 45 degrees
45 degrees off axis total
dipole difference: -3dB
total attenuation: -6.5dB

side wall 3.4ms delay, -3dB attenuation from distance, 37 degrees
67 degrees off axis total
dipole difference: -8.2dB
total attenuation: -11.2dB

At some frequencies you have a front-wall reflection that's not there with a conventional speaker, although the amplitude and timing make that much less significant than the side wall (in a narrower room with just a few feet to the sides) and ceiling reflections.

The other side of this is the human brain's capability to ignore things which smell like reflections which implies the same spectral content - SL has been commenting on this in his recent talks. With off-axis response closer to on-axis things don't seem to suffer as much when you do get too close to objects. I built a pair of Plutos too, and they don't have the same imaging/sound stage problems that went with a pair of Definitive bipolars I tried. Obviously the mid-bass is the same everywhere, baffle step doesn't occur on the tweeter until 3KHz, and a few inches between mid-bass and woofer with a 1KHz cross over is not a lot of wave length to create a power response notch.

[tnargs]

There is little point, or should I say little value to readers, in posting your impressions of speakers or anything else you bought or built. There is a well demonstrated psychological effect where we develop a bias towards things we see as 'ours'.

Of course the glow wears off if we start to covet our neighbours'.... which is a way of seeing it as ours before we even have it!

[tktran303]

Oh contraire!

I've bought lots of things that turned out to crap. Sometimes it took me a day, sometimes a month, or even years before I realised it was no good.

Tried really hard to like it, but you can't make chicken salad out of chickenshit.

There's also little point in listening to something for an hour in a noisy, unfamiliar environment that is vastly different from your own, then making generalisations about how bad it sounds, or how other things in the same class sounds.

[tnargs]

Originally posted by tktran303
Oh (sic) contraire!

I've bought lots of things that turned out to crap. Sometimes it took me a day, sometimes a month, or even years before I realised it was no good.

Tried really hard to like it, but you can't make chicken salad out of chickenshit.

There's also little point in listening to something for an hour in a noisy, unfamiliar environment that is vastly different from your own, then making generalisations about how bad it sounds, or how other things in the same class sounds.

Hi tktran, I hear you man! The effect is real, nonetheless. Scientifically proven and validated, and not subject to anecdotal dismissal by you or I. It is, however, available for us to learn from. If we wish.

The most difficult and humbling thing in hifi is to understand how little our ears detect compared to what our mind imagines. Hence my profile sig, below. The biggest problem in moving closer to fidelity in our home hifi's is being deceived by an experience which goes "I listened to A and then I listened to B and ooooh, one was so much better than the other!" Which is how this thread began....