Has anybody had experience with the Orions?

I have heard the speakers in Mr Linkwitz's room and the speakers are excellent. I have owned many speakers in the $10k-$18k range and these (orions) are definately in the top echelon of this group and are priced much less. I believe I would own them if not for the fact that I couldn't then spend gobs of money on trying new electronics and cables. Darn hobby!

These are seriously good speakers and terrific value. I think you would need to spend multiples to get better overall sound ...and you could easily spend multiples and do a lot worse.

I agree very much with the above comment that relative to other/most speakers they do an excellent job of remaining true to the source.

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,