Hello Odysseyphiles,
Long time lurker, first time poster.
I first had the opportunity to hear Symphonic Line products in the early 1990's, and the experience was memorable; the sound was unlike anything I had heard before. Years later, thanks to Neil Gader's brief review of the Stratos in TAS, I learned about Klaus Bunge and Odyssey Audio. I called Klaus, and at that point, the decision to sell the audio equipment I owned and become an Odyssey customer was relatively painless. There are now two Odyssey systems in my household: the main one is based on a Tempest-Stratos-Nightingale chain and the secondary system on an Etesian-Khartago-Epiphony chain; cabling in both systems is Groneberg; digital sources are Ah! Njoe Tjoeb (upsampled) for the larger system and a Toshiba 4960 DVD player (which sounds very good, by the way) for the smaller.
An audio company that I admire is Usher Audio. I enjoy visiting my local Usher dealer; he represents products lines that I like a lot (Belles, Naim, Schroers & Schroers) and he is not pushy. He has spent hours showing me the differences among several Usher loudspeakers. We have done careful comparisons involving the fantastic Dancer series, the 6-series, the x-series, and the little s-520. Listening to the beryllium Dancers in the dealer's room has been hypnotizing. I have also been grateful for the opportunity to listen to the 6-series, not least because in this forum some participants have described the Usher 6-series as being similar to the venerable Odyssey Lorelei.
I have found the two-way Usher CP-6311 to be very similar in character to the x-718 (this didn't come as a surprise to me, since both were designed by D'Appolito; also, both use the same tweeter) with the obvious difference that the CP-6311 has more bottom-end extension and weight.
The Usher dealer was kind enough to lend me a pair of x-718's to bring to my home and compare to the the Odyssey gear. Needless to say, I was thrilled; the x-series, like every Usher loudspeaker I know of, has been extremely well received by the press, and the x-718 was a speaker that I actually considered purchasing before Odyssey became known to me.
I set up blind tests in both of our listening rooms. My subjects were my wife and our 8-year old daughter, who is actually the official owner of the smaller Odyssey system. She has had considerable exposure to music for a child her age; she studies music and goes with us to orchestral and operatic performances, as well as to chamber performances. (Yes, young children can get a lot of enjoyment from Mozart and Rossini operas.)
The first comparison was between the Usher x-718 and the Odyssey Nightingales. Both speakers retail for $1,300 per pair.
This turned out to be a straightforward comparison, with the Nightingales winning hands-down. I was in charge of switching the speakers, so for me the test was not blind, but the three of us reached the same conclusions: the Nightingales are considerably more natural and more sophisticated than the Ushers. The Ushers put out "more'' (we heard aspects of the recording that were less evident in the presentation of the Nightingales), but they are less refined. My wife summarized it well; she said that through the Nightingales, the human voice sounds more like a human voice and the piano sounds more like a piano, while through the Ushers the human voice and the piano sounds more like playback of a recording. For the piano, she was referring to Miklail Pletnev's recording of Scarlatti sonatas (Virgin Classics, 2001). I agree with her; through the Ushers, the human voice just didn't sound right, and Pletnev's Steinway sounded rather like a digital piano. My daughter was more blunt: she said that, against the Nightingales, the Ushers sounded like a "big radio''.
For this comparison, we used the Njoe Tojoeb-Tempest-Stratos chain. Then we moved to the room where the setup is the Toshiba 4960-Etesian-Khartago chain to compare the the Ushers with the Odyssey Epiphonies. The first impression was how much larger the x-718's are than the Epiphonies. I would say that the cabinet of the Ushers could be as much as 1 1/2 times larger; it is also more elaborate, with its birch cheeks and fancy bi-wireable biding posts. (The pair that we were using had the glossy black finish.) The woofer of the Usher is larger too; on a quick measurement, the Usher's woofer measured 170 mm in diameter, while the Epiphony's was only 125 mm.
Two factors made the second comparison less straightforward than the first one. One is that, in various ways, the Ushers are closer to the Epiphonies than to the Nightingales. Although the Ushers are larger than the Epiphonies and, according to the manufacturer specs, the low end of the Ushers is closer to that of the Nightingales than to that of the Epiphonies (the figures given by the manufacturers are 39 Hz for the Nightingales, 42 Hz for the Ushers, and 49 Hz for the diminutive Epiphonies), the reality, in our rooms, at least, was that with respect to bass extension and sonic weight, the Ushers were much closer to the Epiphonies than to the Nightingales. Also, both the Ushers and the Epiphonies are stand-mounted, rated at 8 Ohms, and rear-ported, while the Nightingales are floorstanding, rated at 4 Ohms, and bottom-ported. The other factor that made the second comparison less easy was the fact that we were using less resolving electronics (e.g., a $100 digital source for the second comparison versus a $1,500 one for the first one). On the other hand, we were comparing a $1,300 pair of speakers with a $600 pair of smaller and more basic-looking minimonitors.
Nevertheless, the conclusions of the second comparison were the same as for the first one: the Ushers put out "more'', but they were rough in comparison. The Odyssey speakers sounded both more natural and more refined.
In his TNT review, comparing the Odyssey Epiphony speakers with the Dynaudio audience 42, Scott Faller wrote that the Epiphonies were "a tad veiled'' but "closer to the truth.'' When I read SF's review, I couldn't quite reconcile the two assertions. I believe I now understand what he meant.
To conclude the experiment, several days later, I re-did the comparisons, this time not with Odyssey electronics, but with my beloved Scott 299 integrated (which I have kept in top performing condition throughout most of my life; it was my father's favorite amplifier - he was a music critic - and he gave it to me when I was a child) and HD-14 speaker cables. Alain Courteau's Odyssey speakers have always sounded great connected to this little gem. Listening to the Ushers powered by the Scott, I didn't learn anything that I hadn't learned during the previous two comparisons.
An important component of the Odyssey Audio lineup that I haven't been able to listen to yet is the Lorelei speaker. The Lorelei may well be Klaus' favorite Odyssey product. The design background of the Loreleis, of course, is very different from that of Alain's speakers. However, one time I heard Klaus refer to the sound characteristics of Alain's speakers as similar to that of Symphonic Line, albeit in a smaller scale. Given the similarities between the CP-6311 and the x-718 products by Usher and the dissimilarities between the latter and the Nightingale, I can only speculate that the Usher 6-series cannot possibly be in the same league as the Lorelei.
I am still somewhat surprised by what I found through these comparisons. Seeing the little Epiphonies outperform a speaker more than twice their price, especially one which has been celebrated by the audio press for its excellent performance to price ratio, was quite an experience. Finally, a chacon son gout, but the minimalistic cabinet of the Epiphonies seems more elegant to me than the more elaborate cabinet of the Ushers.
Many thanks to Klaus and Alain for their fine products.
Reference recordings used:
Digital recordings:
Mikkail Pletnev, Scarlatti Keyboard Sonatas (Virgin Classics)
Takacs Quartet, Beethoven: The Late String Quartets (London)
Philippe, Herreweghe (cond), Bach, J. S., St Matthew Passion (French Harmonia Mundi)
Koeln Chamber Orchestra, Mueller-Bruehl (cond), Brandemburg Concerti (Naxos)
Cleveland Orchestra, Boulez (cond), Stravinsky, Le Chant du Rossignol, l'Historie du Soldat (DG)
Zurich Tonhalle Orchestra, Zinman (cond) Beethoven: The Nine Symphonies (RCA)
Philadelphia Orchestra, Eugene Ormandy (cond), Britten's Young Person's Guide to the Orchestra (RCA)
St Petersburg Philharmonic Orchestra, Temirkanov (cond), Mahler, Symphony #5 (Water Lily)
Baremboim, Mederos, et al., Mi Buenos Aires Querido (Teldec)
Analog recordings:
Academy Chamber Ensemble, Schubert, Octet, Op 166 (Phillips)
Bavarian Radio Symphony Orchestra, Kubelik (cond), Fischer-Dieskau (ten), Malher, Symphony #1, (DG)
Test CD's:
Rives Audio: Test CD 2.
