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Omega Super Alnico Monitor/Aric Audio SE KT88

I had been eying these speakers for over a year now and finally a pair came up for sale with the matching Skylan stands and I just could not resist. The previous owner had ordered them with contrasting wood veneers, cherry front and back and darker wenge on the sides and top and the quality of the workmanship and the attention to matching the veneers is excellent. They look beautiful. Anticipating this eventual purchase, I came across and purchased an Aric Audio Single Ended KT88 amplifier to match his preamp which I had bought a couple of years ago. Coincidentally and completely out of luck the preamp and the amp have the same exact matching silver chassis.The preamp/amp combination sounded real good even driving my Vandersteen 2Ci speakers but with the Omegas they really came to life.  I already have a single driver back-horn loaded speaker pair in my upstairs system but these Omega speakers are in a completely different league. I'm still trying to optimize their placement since I arrived on Saturday but compared with Vandersteen 2Cis in the same exact system/room their level of transparency and speed is truly exceptional. The Vandys have a warmer sound with more rounded musical edges and a bit better soundstage but the imaging and the level of detail out of the Omegas is highly addictive and a real treat. The bass is not quite as deep but is clearly more defined and tighter. In some respect for most of the type of music I listen to I actually find the bass sound more "real" and not as loose and I think I'll be able to get the soundstage and the bass better dialed in with some room placement experiments. As a bonus, the room looks much less cluttered with the standmounts in the same spots.
I think I finally get why such a buzz about these speakers. And Aric's SE KT88 amplifier is also a very nice piece of gear. 
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Showing 2 responses by kalali

kalali's avatar
kalali OP
1,977 posts
 
Thank you. Some folks are driving these speakers with 2-8 wpc SET amps with great results. My Class A SE KT88 is Aric's older (I believe) SEP only design with 18 wpc which I personally think is a good, maybe even a better match for a wider range of music genres. His newer version of this amp allows for toggling between 16 wpc, I guess ultra linear and 8 wpc SET. Lovely sound with these monitors. I honestly didn't expect such level of detail and layering from this set up. It just sounds real alive without any coarseness.
kalali's avatar
kalali OP
1,977 posts
 
I'm getting the room placement gradually dialed in and the soundstage and bass are much better. One characteristic that I'm really enjoying is the quality of the sound especially at lower listening volumes with hardly any loss of detail and dynamics when compared to my floor standers. It does take a little while to get the ears/brain recalibrated to this type of sound. It does not have the "weight" of a large floorstander driven by a high power SS amplifier but that weight came at the price of less speed, at least in my system. This is particularly obvious in drums and piano in jazz pieces. All in all, very interesting and engaging sound. I tend to agree with a previous poster about some limitations with listening to large orchestral or hard rock content at higher listening volumes where the sound can get a bit congested but lowering the volume cleans it out without loosing much detail. Perhaps adding a sub or two and relieving some of the load from the drivers could address that issue. 
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