Linkwitz Orions finished

Finished my Orions! Details of the concept and drivers etc here: http://www.linkwitzlab.com/orion_challenge.htm This has been a long and much interupted build. I started last summer. However they are now finished and I am really pleased, both with the looks, and (especially) the sound. I will perhaps say more about the sound later but at the moment I'm mainly just basking in how good and right it seems! I bought the plans from Linkwitz Lab, and a pre-assembled active X-over, but built the speakers from scratch. Followed the plans very closely apart from a slight change to the shape of the top part of the side panels for aesthetic (WAF) reasons. Amps are Alesis, 2 x RA300 for treble and mid, which benefit from mods by Tenson, and 2 x RA500 for the bass.



There are more pics here: http://s305.photobucket.com/albums/nn230/GordonJ_photos/Orion Build/

 

Well done.

 

nice job.....

 

beautiful..!

 

That's a superb job you've done there.

I look forward to hearing your listening impressions.

 

Those do look fantastic, well done.

I have a couple of (possibly bone) questions:

a. Is the crossover fully balanced with XLR in / out?

b. Could you operate this set up with just 2 stereo amps, one for bass each side and one for the mid / treble?

 

Thanks guys.

A few more details for anyone interested. I haven't kept track of the details of what they cost, but I think they've come out just the right side of £2k or thereabouts. That seems quite a lot for a DIY project, but the SEAS and Peerless drivers aren't cheap, and I chose to buy the X-over ready built to avoid prolonging the agony with a lot of fiddly soldering. Pleased with that decision as it looks pretty cool I think. They're fairly straightforward to build actually - mostly 3/4 ply and butt joints. It took me a long time because (a) we'd just moved house and there was lots of other stuff to do (b) illness in the family has meant we've spent a lot of weekends elsewhere and (c) I made the side panels out of ply and veneered them (hadn't veneered anything for 35 years so there was a bit of a re-learning curve - if I was doing them again I'd get some nice solid wood for the sides).

Initial listening impressions?

The sound doesn't seem to be coming from the speakers! I guess this is the dipole effect, but they present a really good image with a great sense of depth and space. Things like pianos and acoustic guitars and voices (i.e. where I know what they're supposed to sound like) sound more real than I've experienced before - it's like they are really there. As a result I've been listening to more acoustic/classical/jazz and loving it. Some things sound more better than others (if that makes sense) so I think they may be showing up the deficiencies in some recordings. In general though there's a lot more detail, more life, more rhythm and more feeling than my previous set up (Bryston 3BSST/Wilson Benesch Orator). Usually when I've tried to do a critical listen I've ended up getting engrossed in the music and forgotten to listen to the speakers, which is obviously a good thing! The bass is great - really melodic and without any of the boxy sound I'd learned to live with without knowing it. The texture of bass notes is much clearer, the tune comes through, and they go very deep. They need space around them - 4 feet from the back wall is recommended and there's a definite opening up of the sound that happens around that point, so I've fitted cork feet to allow me to slide them out for listening and back to avoid getting in everyone's way. So far its all good.

 

a. No
b. No, you'd need a minimum of 3. You need seperate amplification for the treble, mid, and bass as these are all seperated out by the active x-over prior to seeing a power amp. You can power both the XLS-10's on each side in parallel with one stereo amp but it would need to have plenty of current capacity to get the best out of the system. I've tried using one RA500 for this - it gets pretty hot and is lighting up all its LED's way ahead of the other channels. The bass sounds cleaner and more punchy with 2 so that each XLS-10 has its own dedicated channel.