Currently, I listen to most of my music in a near-field setup in my home office. The 3i are ideal for this (IMHO). The 7s sounded thin, lacked bass, and there wasn't much of a sound stage. [I'll explain some things that influenced my listening experience for each speaker.]
The Alnicos were driven by a Decware tube amp with a Resonessence Concero DAC.
The 7s were powered by an inexpensive class D amp (don't recall which one) with the smallest/weakest Resonessence portable DAC. The 7s were not positioned correctly, so they did not sound their best.
The 3s were on a desk in a near-field setup. It seems to me another class D amp powered them. I don't recall the DAC.
My main system is an AVA 400R Fet valve amp, AVA T8 tube preamp, Cambridge Audio DAC Magic Plus, computer as source, and occasionally an old Sony TT. The 400R is overkill for any of the Omega speakers. I purchased the 400R last year when I fully expected to buy a big, not-so-efficient pair of speakers. It turns out I'm not likely to buy those speakers.
Gotta go for now.
Michael
Michael and his lovely wife Melody were here for several hours and what great company they were. I thoroughly enjoyed it.
I hope readers don't miss construe what Michael was saying: the Super 3i is
not better than the Super Alnico Monitor. As far as the sound went he loved the Super Alnico Monitor and preferred it above the others. It was on the Super Alnico Monitors he did almost all his listening. On the other two, we only listened to one song on each - hardly a way to pass judgement. He was not prepared for the large size of the Super Alnico Monitor, hence for his application, he preferred the Super 3i, and in his shoes, so would I.
After that, we switched to the Super 7 Monitors, with as he said, a much lesser (
not weaker in the true sense of the word) front end. Going down instead of up can give a very unfair advantage to the lower end system, and that was part of the problem. As far as the 7s being "incorrectly" positioned which made them sound thinner than the Alnicos, "incorrectly" was: they were out into the room for the sake of image depth, not to mention that part of the room has challenging acoustics. After Michael left I moved the 7s closer to the wall which fleshed out the sound quite nicely. As far as the 7s imaging poorly, it's news to me. On a previous post I mentioned running the Super 7s in my main system with Decware/Concero HD. The sound was off the charts good.
Next, we went to the Super 3i on the desktop. The 3i has been (along with the Super 3 desktop) my go to speaker for the desktop and reigns supreme there. They also have about $1600 worth of electronics in front of them. Currently one of the finest desktop systems I've heard, so the Super 7 in it's compromised part of the room didn't stand a chance. I am considering not having a stereo in that part of the room until I can sort out the acoustics. I also feel the Super 7 may need a little bit of patience as far as break in goes.
JLM makes a good point about aging ears and it amazes me how loud some customers want to hear the music - it almost drives me out of the room. I had my hearing checked about two years ago and according to the audiologist, I have excellent hearing. I sometimes wonder if the reason people like G Georgopoulos (who has never added one iota to the Omega AudioCircle) talk about single driver speakers as being compromised in the top end is because their hearing is compromised. The most laid back speaker Louis ever made was the Hoyt Bedford and I thought they had a nice top end with great soundstage depth. Protect your hearing, without it you're out of the hobby, or worse, out of business.
