This review is late coming for a few reasons: the speakers took a lot longer to break in than anticipated, I wanted to hear them with a decent s-s amp, and I broke my ankle playing Frisbee with the kids. Well, my leg’s in a cast and I can sit up now that the swelling has subsided.
Anyway, here goes. I first heard the Omegas at the ’03 MWAF in Lima, OH. Louis was in a comparatively large room, so I didn’t really have a chance get a good assessment of what they would sound like in an appropriate set-up. I went home to by SET/Khorns rig and remained content. My wife and I are adopting 2 boys and my mother in law moved in with us. I still had my dedicated music room….for a while. My wife then decided to move her office into our home resulting in the losing my music room. My new digs are my bedroom which won’t accommodate the Khorns. I dreaded having to look for new speakers. Having been an audio hobbyist for 35 years, a SoundStage! Reviewer for about 4 years and a part-time audio shop owner, I’ve had a crap load of speakers in my home and had an idea of what I would need to satisfy myself. With space being at a premium, I needed to look for a smaller speaker with near-field listening potential. Stand-mounts were also a high liklihood. There are a lot of good stand mounts out there, but I remember particularly enjoying the single driver speakers I had when I was running my shop. I carried the Lamhorn (a large floor stander) and the Loth X BS1 and Amaze. The single driver speakers handle voices unlike any speaker I’ve heard, but one sacrifices bass extension. A subwoofer can sometimes be integrated to make of the lack of bass.
After doing a lot of research, I decided to listen to several single driver designs. I recall liking the Jordan driver equipped Konus Essence I heard at CES. Carolina Audio does the same speaker for less than half the money. I also Like the Cain & Cain Abby I heard at MWAF as well as the Omegas. Thankfully, a local dealer carries all three lines, so I was able to demo all of them in one session. The dealer also had a 300B amp, which is what I primarily use. The Jordan was nice, but needs more juice than my 300B amps could provide. The C&C Abby was also quite excellent in it’s depiction of smaller scale recordings, but my reservations involved the Abby having a bit of coloration in the lower midrange and a tendency to become a bit confused sounding in complex orchestral music passages. IMO, the coloration is cabinet-induced. The latter characteristic I attribute to the relatively inexpensive Fostex driver being used. I then heard the Omega Super 3 (standard) and was quite impressed. It sounded much like the Abby, but had less coloration and slightly less weight in the lower midrange and upper bass.
Considering the Super3 was priced about 1/3 the cost of the Abby, I thought there might be some room for tweaking the Super3 to bring it to a level I would appreciate. I contacted Louis about potentially substituting the F120 Alnico Fostex driver in place of the standard driver. Louis emailed back stating it could be done since they were the same size. Since the F120A was priced at ~$230 each, I knew the new Super3 was going to more expensive, but still less than the Abby.
For those not familiar to Alnico, it is a magnet made of Aluminum, Nickel, and Cobalt. That substance is found in a lot of older speakers as well as some newer ones. I grew up listening to Altec Iconics and also heard Alnico in the SAP line I carried in my shop. Alnico carries a pretty hefty price tag as compared to the ferrite magnets used in most drivers. While some may disagree, IMO the Alnico drivers have a more organic “tone” than the ferrite or neodynium designs regardless of what measurements show. The F120A will also handle complex orchestral passages more adeptly than the standard driver. This is important to me since I listen to classical music most of the time.
When the Super 3R Alnico arrived, I knew they would take a lot of time to break in, so I didn’t really listen to them for at least 150 hours. At that time they were still pretty rough, so I placed another 100 hours on them. Well, they sounded pretty damn good for <$1200.00. Absolutely superb midrange, excellent hi-frequency extension and full-bodied bass to about 70 Hz, BUT the bass was kind of mono-toned and I heard a significant amount of port chuffing (audible turbulence in the port). I emailed Louis with my concerns and he agreed with my assessment. Here’s a brief explanation why. The F120A driver has about 4x the cone excursion (aka- Xmax) of the driver on the standard Super3, so it’s moving a lot more air. The increased depth of the new port tube on the Alnico cabinet caused the throat opening inside the cabinet to be very close to back side of the cabinet. Simply put, there wasn’t enough room for the air to move in and out of the cabinet. The resultant pressure increase in the cabinet was impacting the cone excursion and likely contributing to the monotones bass. Louis advised that the Alnico driver would require the driver to be mounted on the narrow baffle rather than the wide baffle as seen on the regular Super3. Louis kindly made a new set of cabinets and shipped them to me. I swapped out the drivers and set up for another listening session.
WOW!!!! Now I was hearing what I expected. Simply put: from 70 Hz up, it is hard to fault this speaker in any fashion. The attractive, rock-solid, well-built cabinets allow the speakers to totally disappear. High frequency extension was not lacking. One of the greatest attributes was excellent tonal balance and timbral truth. Images were solid and with no image drift (usually crossover induced). I did not hear any confusion on complex musical passages either. They can also play quite loud without breaking up. More so than the standard driver, but one has to consider the extra cost if on a budget. I’ve heard 5$ figure speakers that the Super 3R Alnico would embarrass. Are the perfect? No… No speaker is perfect, despite what some manufacturers (or reviewers) might say. To no one’s surprise, the Super 3R Alnico lack deep bass. And so does every other speaker of this size.
Next, I tried different amps. First, I love SET amps for their spaciousness and ability to handle musical nuance and have been using them exclusively in my main system for many years. One criticism of SET (deserved or not) is their inherent lack of bass control due to low damping factors. I can’t say I experienced this with the Khorns though, as they have horn-loaded bass, so cone excursion is minimal. But I did see the F120A cone excursion quite clearly. They move a lot of air for a small speaker. So I hooked up the AN P1SE signature. The P1 uses two EL84 in parallel single-ended configuration for about 11 watts/ch. I actually preferred the P1 SE to the DRD300Bs. The P1 seemed to control the speaker a bit better. While I lost a tiny bit of resolution, I more than made up for it with a more coherent presentation. I would attribute this to the damping factor of the P1 (I don’t know what it is since Audio Note doesn’t publish many specs with their stuff) rather than the extra 3 watts the P1 has over the DRD300B. I thought I’d better try a solid-state amp before writing the review to see if the even greater damping factor would impact the sound. I eventually lugged up a McIntosh MC252 (250w/ch) and gave it a spin. Well, I heard even better sound in my opinion. The MC252 actually dispelled a lot of bad opinions I held abut solid-state (graininess, 2 dimensionality, lack of timbral resolution). The MC252 really controlled the speaker and it seemed to be able to play even louder than the tube amps. Bass was also better defined. Again, I don’t fully attribute this to the sheer power of the amp, but it’s ability to control the speaker. So maybe the Super3R Alnico would sound better with solid-state or push-pull tube amps than single ended designs.
That being said, I’m not sure I’d have the same impression about the solid-state amp with the non-Alnico Super3. I think the standard drivers would likely sound better with tubes, but this is conjecture as I didn’t have a pair to do a direct comparison.
Bass extension, or lack of, will likely be based on personal preference. For small ensemble, vocal, and popular music, the Super3R Alnico bass will likely be sufficient. Rockers would likely need a subwoofer. Personally, I use a VBT subwoofer-sometimes. for piano and large scale orchestral as I get better room loading (room size ~2700 cu/ft), but if I were in a smaller room, I may not need the sub.
In summary, both the Super3 and Super3R Alnico are no-brainer steals at their respective prices. I congratulate Louis for his design accomplishment and thank him for his willingness to work with tweaking the cabinet design to get the most out of the F120A.
Reference system:
Source: Audio Note CDT2 transport, Audio Note DAC3.1x Balanced
Pre-amp: Audio Note M2 Balanced pre-amp
Amps: Welborne DRD300B Ultimate monoblocks, Audio Note P1-SE Signature, and McIntosh MC252 amp.
Interconnects: Creative Cable Concepts Silver Bullet digital IC, Analysis Plus Solo monocrystal IC
Speaker cable: Analysis Plus Solo monocrystal
Power cords: Custom Power Company Top Gun, VenHaus Flavor 1, 2
Equipment stand: Grand Prix Audio Monaco
Tweaks: Blue Circle Music Ring1200 (balanced power supply), Symposium Rollerblocks under CD transport, Quantum Symphony, Aurilex room treatment.
