John Kalinowski, USA

I have been a audiophile for 25 years and threw it all. I kept upgrading equipment trying to find the right balance of sound. Never could get it, but came close. Finally I took a chance on a pair of Avant-Garde Duo 2.2 and 2A3 SET amplifier. What an eye opener! This was the sound I was looking for. But I could never get the bass to integrate, no matter what I tried (amps ,cables, different rooms...).

So I started looking into other horns and decided on an Oris 150 horn with Lowther PM4A drivers with the new cones, the Cabaz bass and the Welborne Labs Crossover. I had better bass integration though a lot less of it. Great mid's but no high frequencies. I tried the Raven R1 tweeter and tri-amplifying. Wow(!), much better but a real mess (so much gear) with the integration still needed to be improved.

First I added another pair of Oris 150 horns and Lowther PM4A drivers and I noticed a huge improvement in treble integration, but had to make a permanent stand for a dual horn and the bass still seemed weak. After listening for some time to this set up I found myself bothered by the peaky midrange of the Lowther PM4A drivers. More upgrading and changes resulted, the peaks stayed.

What to do now? I couldn't afford Bert's AER drivers, so I looked into other brands and decided to get the Fostex 200A full range. I tried those and found the peaks were mostly gone but the tweeter had to cover a bit more range and now my system was just around 96dB/1Watt (and still a weak bass).

I designed a pair of woofer towers around a pair of Fostex 16" woofers. When I used the Cabaz woofers I found that they integrated best on stands next to the Tri-horn so I designed the new woofer towers this way. During constructing the Tri-horn I heard about the new released Fostex FE208EZ drivers. I am using those now with the new Fostex T90 tweeter with a Hovland music capacitor, a Fostex step-down transformer and Cardas binding posts.

With this present system I have great integration (I could not ask for better!), huge dynamics and great bass response with much detail!

The Tri-horn frame is made fully adjustable and 3" x 1" glossy black powder coated steal as woofer stands. The bass enclosures are finished with Italian laminate and built from of 2" MDF. Try the Oris horns, you will be amazed about their musicality and value for your money!