Has anybody had experience with the Orions?

I've built a pair and will be adding the rear tweeter to them in the next 2-3 weeks. I've auditioned numerous other speakers upto 18K—not in my price range, but I did it to find out what 10-20K can get you.

The Orion has the cleanest most detailed bass I've heard. (In my room, it's flat at 20 hz. I reduce the bass usually 4 dB on most jazz and pop recordings, but leave it flat on classical.)

Cleanest, fullest, most transparent midrange I've heard.

Clean, crisp, treble—the best I've heard overall—almost, but not quite as fast as a good ribbon, such as the Piega.

Soundstage, imaging, and transparency throughout the entire audible bandwidth is superlative.

Never thought I'd spend so much on speakers—but these have taught me there's no need to dump megabucks in amplification, cables, and other money pits to get state-of-the-art home audio reproduction.

Not as good as Magico's

There is an interesting thread from Lynn Olson on DIYAudio about open baffle speakers that discusses his ideas for a new speaker as well as some of the the other designs out there like the Orion. It's a huge thread but has been intersting reading.

http://www.diyaudio.com/forums/showthread.php?s=&threadid=100392&perpage=10&highlight=&pagenumber=1

Thank you all for your interesting answers.

Regalma1, I hope somebody has them here in Mexico as well. I'll look into the forum.

Gregm, you're right. Live music was an overstatement, but being close to the source is my cup of tea. This implies neutrality, and dynamics ability with low distortion. If as you say, they remind you of horns, their dynamics have to be among the best for direct radiation speakers. After all, the cones are practically free to move in response to the coil's magnetic field! As for the bass, again you're right. Their -3 dB cut go down "only" to 30 Hz, which is more or less normal for their size. This is enough for me given my musical taste.

Glide3, you also seem impressed by them, specially for their accuracy. But what about the soundstage (width, depth, height), how good was it?

Ojgalli, adding the rear tweeters apparently it's a BIG improvement. It seems to be much more so than with conventional box speakers having rear tweeters. Could you please report us back when you test them?

Tarsando, could you be more specific? In what areas do you think the Magico's surpass the Orions?

Matt, thanks for the link. I'll read it thoroughly.

Regards,

Tarsando,

Here you go again, comparing apples to citrus type fruit. Not only are these two speakers continents apart in price, have you actually heard both of them?

Oz