@bdp24 I’ve been running a set of custom built Linkwitz Orions for about 14 years now. They started out as version 3.1 and then did the update to version 3.3. I’m very much in love with them. Every so often I get the urge to do something different, but then I take a serious listen to my Orions and the urge goes away.
Most audiophile visitors leave with envy. They do sound good. But the real issue is that they sound good to me. Because this design calls for 8 channels at 60 wpc, there aren’t a lot of options in power amps. Fortunately because it doesn’t have a passive crossover, a lower cost amp does fine because it doesn’t have to cope with the massive distortion and inefficiencies of a passive crossover.
Passive crossovers do terrible things to an impedance curve, which is why so many people drop enormous amounts on beefy amps. When you use active crossovers to manage all of the drivers, an amp channel only has to deal with a single driver, which is a MUCH easier load. There’s a reason so many powered professional grade loudspeaker systems use active crossovers.
I run 8 channels of a 12 channel MOSFET B&K AV1260 "zone" amp and it sounds very good. Got it cheap too.
Today were you to build the current rev Linkwitz Orion, you’d probably spend about $6000 for everything - drivers, cabinets, active crossover and amplification. I can guarantee you that you’re not going to find any $6000 loudspeaker and amp combination that will come close to what the Orions can do.
The newer Linkwitz LX521 design addresses some of the things that Danny R. complained about with the Orion design. That’s what you’d expect from a designer as they sought to improve their system. The LX521 project pencils out at even less money than the Orion, which is why few Orion systems get built today.
Active crossovers are vastly superior to passive. The audio industry is built around selling you a speaker and an amp to drive it. Marketing just isn’t set up to treat you like a professional audio engineer. Nobody is selling one amp as a good "tweeter" amp and another for good bass reproduction. It’s much easier to tout some Focal or Magico loudspeaker as Audio Nirvana, and then expect you to go drop another $12k or more on the perfect amp to drive them. And let’s not forget the additional $6k you’re going to spend on loudspeaker cables.
Danny doesn’t use active crossovers because that would require you to buy two amps, not one, to drive his systems. And unless he spec’d the amps, you’d have to do your own matching and tweaking. Not a good move if he’s to sell loudspeakers. So he’s going to tell you that you have to have an expensive amp to drive his speakers, when the truth is that you can get BETTER results with active crossover and lower cost amps.
Sorry guys. Active crossovers in a loudspeaker system are just superior engineering. But you have to fully engineer the system together. No swapping out this amp for another, and where’s the fun in that?
My Orions leave me happy and that’s all that really matters.
Most audiophile visitors leave with envy. They do sound good. But the real issue is that they sound good to me. Because this design calls for 8 channels at 60 wpc, there aren’t a lot of options in power amps. Fortunately because it doesn’t have a passive crossover, a lower cost amp does fine because it doesn’t have to cope with the massive distortion and inefficiencies of a passive crossover.
Passive crossovers do terrible things to an impedance curve, which is why so many people drop enormous amounts on beefy amps. When you use active crossovers to manage all of the drivers, an amp channel only has to deal with a single driver, which is a MUCH easier load. There’s a reason so many powered professional grade loudspeaker systems use active crossovers.
I run 8 channels of a 12 channel MOSFET B&K AV1260 "zone" amp and it sounds very good. Got it cheap too.
Today were you to build the current rev Linkwitz Orion, you’d probably spend about $6000 for everything - drivers, cabinets, active crossover and amplification. I can guarantee you that you’re not going to find any $6000 loudspeaker and amp combination that will come close to what the Orions can do.
The newer Linkwitz LX521 design addresses some of the things that Danny R. complained about with the Orion design. That’s what you’d expect from a designer as they sought to improve their system. The LX521 project pencils out at even less money than the Orion, which is why few Orion systems get built today.
Active crossovers are vastly superior to passive. The audio industry is built around selling you a speaker and an amp to drive it. Marketing just isn’t set up to treat you like a professional audio engineer. Nobody is selling one amp as a good "tweeter" amp and another for good bass reproduction. It’s much easier to tout some Focal or Magico loudspeaker as Audio Nirvana, and then expect you to go drop another $12k or more on the perfect amp to drive them. And let’s not forget the additional $6k you’re going to spend on loudspeaker cables.
Danny doesn’t use active crossovers because that would require you to buy two amps, not one, to drive his systems. And unless he spec’d the amps, you’d have to do your own matching and tweaking. Not a good move if he’s to sell loudspeakers. So he’s going to tell you that you have to have an expensive amp to drive his speakers, when the truth is that you can get BETTER results with active crossover and lower cost amps.
Sorry guys. Active crossovers in a loudspeaker system are just superior engineering. But you have to fully engineer the system together. No swapping out this amp for another, and where’s the fun in that?
My Orions leave me happy and that’s all that really matters.