Here are my new fully horn loaded Oris-based speakers! I have the Oris 150 horns with AER MD3 drivers. The bass horns covering the frequency range below 160 Hz are 29 Hz straight bass horns (3 meters long and very, very heavy indeed!).

First of all I would like to thank a range of people who helped me design the bass horns and answered a bunch of questions along the way. John Sheerin, Bill Fitzmaurize, Jeff Robinson have been very helpful indeed. Last but not least I would of course like to thank Bert Doppenberg who has not only been very helpfull regarding the bass horns, but also made the Oris horns generally available!

The Oris system is my first fully horn loaded system. Before I went into horns I had large DR speakers from JBL 250 Ti’s and Tannoy Buckingham. While the JBL excelled in the bass the Tannoys were very clear and revealing in the mids and in the highs. Well, that was my impression untill I heard the Oris horns...

I now hear things from my CD’s that I simply could not hear before. As Karsten Lieberkind once said: “Its like sitting in a pair of giant, high quality head phones”. Voices are so natural. It’s great fun to play especially female voices on this system for people who are not hifi-nerds. They are typically really impressed that a speaker system can reproduce human voices in such a realistic way.

Overall the sound is natural, crystal clear, detailed – and dynamic. I can play very loud without the slightest hint of compression or distortion. However, the system sounds great at low volumes too. Contrary to what I experience with the JBL’s, I don’t have to turn up the volume on the Oris horns in order to make the speakers ‘open up’. The details are there right from the beginning.

The integration between the two horns is seamless – at least to me. This might be partly because of the low crossover point, and partly because the two horns are completely time-aligned. Finally, I can’t help saying that having bass horns, which is new for me, have made dramatic changes in the reproduction of bass in my home. Especially with the eAR Two power amp on the bass horns, I now have a truly scaring ‘punch’ in the bass when it’s called for!

Equipment:

• CD player: Modified Phillips DVD963SA
• Preamp: eAR Pre with built-in active crossover
• Power amp for the Oris horns: eAR Enigma (yes, they are semi-digital, but does not sound ‘digital’ at all)
• Power amp for the bass horns: eAR Two
• Cables: Rather cheap stuff.