[ronpod]

Has anyone heard Siegfried Linkwitz's Orion-3?

http://www.linkwitzlab.com/orion-rev3.htm

The modifications in the ASP seems to provide a major change in the mid to tweeter frequency responses...

[Zerogravity]

Yes, these are with the Rear facing tweets! a few reviews have prefered the rear tweeter as being more open? Whatever that means. This is a well known design and pretty much the one by which all other DIY speakers are measured! I'd recommend you take a look at Danny's GR-Research V-1, Super V and V-2s as they have been compared favourably to the Orions without the need for all the amps for each individual driver! Needless to say, any of the Orion designs are second to none, at any cost level! If I ever had the chance and just wanted a 2 channel speaker, this would be the one I would look at very hard! Never mind, sorry you obviously knew about the general design! Yes The ASP mods are and interesting point!

[rave959]

Thanks for posting ronpod!  This should be very interesting.   

Ian

[lowtech]

Has anyone heard Siegfried Linkwitz's Orion-3?

Early reports are just starting to trickle in.  John Stone, the SEAS US distributor, owns a set and just upgraded his.

"Wow! I mean WOW!! This is everything SL says it is and then some. It really is like listening to a completely new speaker and one which is magnitudes better than the one it replaces. The midrange and treble are now just so much more open, detailed, and most importantly, coherent and seamless. And that's just a small part of it. You simply have to hear it for yourself. "

You can read about it here.

[ronpod]

The Orion-3 modification to the Orion+ is simply the exchange of about $20 worth of resistors and capacitors in the Orion analog signal processor (ASP) which is the active crossover. But the change in the midrange and treble is beyond that modest investment. Interestingly, now I can continually turn the volume up and the music remains pure but the sound stage keeps expanding to the point where the voice coils could fry. Before the version 3 modification, this type of volume increase in music would be uncomfortable and unpleasant (on any speaker system I've heard previously). Now I'm almost unaware of how loud the music is until I try to communicate with my wife and realize that I can't compete with the volume of the music. This is an entirely new phenomenon to me; never has this happened before. Also this is the first time that my wife hasn't complained about the music being too loud. Imagine that! I am in fear of being evicted from my neighborhood!

I listened to Natalie Merchant's new release "Leave Your Sleep" and this great music together with the Orion-3 has me spell bound. I find it exceeding difficult to end my listening session and can not wait to start listening to all of my musical collection again. This is absolutely the best $20 I have ever spent in audio gear!

[ronpod]

Seigfried Linkwitz may bring his Orion-3 speakers to RMAF     

[Nyal Mellor]

Orion 3 is definitely worth the time with the soldering iron. A small, but significant increase in soundstage 'openness'. It seems I am possible to hear further into the acoustic of a recording venue and the decay of a musical note.

And very interesting that most of these changes that Linkwitz implemented are pre-meditated deviations from a flat frequency response. Psychoacoustics it seems, we are still learning.

Also I agree with Ronpod, I now am getting to the point where I need to think about upgrading amps, I think I am starting to run into the boundaries of what my 30W class A amps can do on the mid and tweeter.

[Speedskater]

A few weeks ago, it was the Orion 3.  Then the Orion 3.1.  Today it's the Orion 3.2.
All are small voicing changes in the active crossover.

[ronpod]

Siegfried Linkwitz is either masterfully or unwittingly conducting a master course on psychoacoustics using his extremely accurate Orions as the demonstration transducers.

The cost of the course is the previously so-called Orion+ speakers, astute attention to await the next lesson (Version 3.0, V3.1, V3.2 ...), careful observance of the web published resulting response curves, and repeated small electronic component orders from the likes of DigiKey (just a few dollars each time).

Siegfried has a suggested reference "Acoustics and Hearing."   This book contains a series of scientific experiments that elucidate head-related sterophony achieving surround-sound effects in living room with only two loudspeakers.

The active XO's of the Orion are superbly positioned for these lessons. This is because, although there may be a high number of components in these XO's, each circuit including notch filters, shelving filters, shaping circuits, etc. are relatively independent. This is in contrast to passive XO's where a change in any one of the few components often times affects the whole XO requiring global component re-specification.

The structure of these lessons are as follows; Siegfried suggests a modification of a couple of components in a particular filter, provides frequency response curves of the before and after the modification, and also provides a abbreviated description of the psychoacoutical phenomena that points to where to find more information in the suggested reference. 

The down shelving of high frequencies off the flat response line is a fascinating phenomena. The psychoacoutics of phantom sources (the very definition of sound stage) and how they are excited by stereo transducers is now better understood through these progressive lessons provided by Siegfried.

Thank you Siegfried for providing user involvement in the discovery process and pushing the science at the same time.

It is truely amazing that "small" changes in "voicing" can bring about a level of aliveness that I have not experienced before (that of which I was shearching for at multiple RMAF events).

[Nyal Mellor]

Would be even better if the whole XO was digital, then I wouldn't have to get the bloody soldering iron out each time!!

EDIT: it appears the shelving is something I should be able to experiment with using the parametric EQ in my music server...

[lowtech]

Would be even better if the whole XO was digital, then I wouldn't have to get the bloody soldering iron out each time!!

EDIT: it appears the shelving is something I should be able to experiment with using the parametric EQ in my music server...

True regarding ease of changes, but you'd have to live with degraded sound quality.  (The few who have actually gone down the digital XO route with their Orions have not been pleased with the results.)

P.S. It's probably best to dig out the soldering iron if you really want to hear the change that SL has made to the design.

[Speedskater]

Would be even better if the whole XO was digital, then I wouldn't have to get the bloody soldering iron out each time!!

That's probably true! But he started designing this series of speakers some 30 years ago and each was an incremental advance. Plus digital DSP crossovers are a rapidly progressing field. He also wants to have products to sell and digital is available everywhere.

[Nyal Mellor]

True regarding ease of changes, but you'd have to live with degraded sound quality.  (The few who have actually gone down the digital XO route with their Orions have not been pleased with the results.)

P.S. It's probably best to dig out the soldering iron if you really want to hear the change that SL has made to the design.

I am on v3.1. Re degrading sound quality. Not sure I follow. If I can match the transfer curves it should be fine, especially because we are talking about very minor 'shaping' EQ, not implementing large +dB shelving filters (the thing I think people have run into problems trying to implement)

[lowtech]

I am on v3.1. Re degrading sound quality. Not sure I follow.

My comment was made in response to what you said about the Orion crossover being digital.

Would be even better if the whole XO was digital...

If I can match the transfer curves it should be fine, especially because we are talking about very minor 'shaping' EQ, not implementing large +dB shelving filters (the thing I think people have run into problems trying to implement)

I suppose as long as you aren't introducing digital processing just for this purpose, and you are able to exactly match the v3.2 curve.  Seems easier to just break out the soldering iron.

[ronpod]

The Linkwitz Orion speakers seem to be getting alot of attention on some of the other boards; some of which seems to be down right hostile. It is reasonable to consider Siegfried a true pioneer in OB who currently seems to be taking arrows, but who seems to be shooting those arrows? People who are following Siegfried's path (which he has extended further in recent days, by the way). What is the motive of shooting arrows anyway? Surly business this making profit off of others ideas without much credit conceded. Unfortunately there seems to be considerable gentlemanly distance between those that forge new technological territory and those hucksters that will sell bling to make a living.

[MaxCast]

The Linkwitz Orion speakers seem to be getting alot of attention on some of the other boards; some of which seems to be down right hostile. It is reasonable to consider Siegfried a true pioneer in OB who currently seems to be taking arrows, but who seems to be shooting those arrows? People who are following Siegfried's path (which he has extended further in recent days, by the way). What is the motive of shooting arrows anyway? Surly business this making profit off of others ideas without much credit conceded. Unfortunately there seems to be considerable gentlemanly distance between those that forge new technological territory and those hucksters that will sell bling to make a living.

please, no need to bring the arrows here to this thread.  Don't ruin a good thing that you have.

[MaxCast]

Well said.  Wonder who you're referring to.   

Strike one   

[lowtech]

Strike one   

At the risk of obtaining a 2nd strike...

Don't ruin a good thing that you have.

What "good thing" exactly does Ron have?  The privilege to discuss a speaker that isn't represented by a "circle", or prehaps moderator who isn't a "fan boy" (or is an anti-fanboy) of the design?

[mcgsxr]

Hmmn, as the mod of this circle, I highly doubt you can source anywhere on the Net, let alone around here, that I am or am not a fan of the Orion - I have, for the record, never heard it.

Let's keep it nice - it is really simple - say what you want about the design, your own listening experiences etc - BUT, let's keep the personal comments, attacks, jibes, and other "spice" out of it.

If you like something, say so - if you don't, feel free to say so also - but please let's not go down the path of suggesting that because someone owns, designs or sells something that there ideas are any less valid.  If you believe that their opinion is biased, so be it, but let's keep it nice.

If Sigfried brings the Orion (any version) to anywhere near Toronto, I would gladly give them a listen.

[wowo101]

Not being an Orion owner myself, I´ve learned an awful lot about dipole and OB design by working through SL´s resources and by following the evolution of the Orion. Currently designing my first OB speaker, I was especially attracted by the discussion of the recent modifications leading to the Orion 3.2.

However, I think the reasoning behind the modifications might be flawed (even if the results are beneficial).

SL argues that at angles around 30° (the angle stereo speakers are typically firing at us), we are more sensitive to high frequency sounds than to mid and low frequency sounds, making harmonics and overtones sound too bright compared to their fundamentals, which in turn not only would lead to a perceivedly unbalanced sound but also to compromised imaging because our brain gets incoherent clues for soundstage reconstruction.

There is a lot of research on the topic of frequency- and angle-dependent hearing sensitivity, yet SL was the first to draw such a conclusion. That got me thinking.

The Orion design, as John Kreskovsky and others have pointed out, suffers from a blooming of the dipole pattern in the frequency range above 1-2 kHz, caused by the wide baffle the tweeter is seeing and only being remedied in a range where the tweeter starts to beam.

So my alternative explanation of the beneficial effects people are hearing with Orion 3.2 (or, for that matter, 3.1) is this: The blooming leads to an increase in total radiated sound power in the frequency regions in question, which in turn makes the speakers sound overly bright in reverberant rooms and also subtracts from naturalness of imaging.

I was happy to find I´m not alone with this reasoning - and I gladly admit that much of what I know about dipoles and OB speakers (including the issue of blooming) I have learned from Rudolf and John, who are of the same opinion on this issue.

What do you think?