I received my Oris Reference Compact 150 speakers with AER MD3 drive units in June 2006 when I drove with my car to Holland to pick them up from Bert. Speakers are finished in American cherry wood veneer. Bert took pictures of them before I took them home with me and he used these pictures for his web site. During past year the color of the wood got a little darker. When you look at the pictures of my system you will see the left speaker has the more correct color (reddish as the cherry wood should look) as the light conditions when I took photos were not ideal and the right speaker did not receive enough daylight.

I bought these speakers on the basis of people's opinion on the internet since I have never heard horn speakers with AER units installed before. I did listen to Lowther (back) horns and Avantgarde Duo speakers before and thought I had a pretty good idea how horns sound. I used to be rather unhappy with the Lowther DIY speakers I used to own as I felt the speaker units were poorly made and the coils started to rub soon, and were hard to align for a long time. I felt Oris speakers were more properly designed than the Avantgarde Duos, even when not considering the price of Avantgarde speakers. So I ordered the speakers from Bert and they were ready in about 3 months time for me to collect.

Like any speakers I used to own, these also needed significant time to burn in to reach the optimum sound. It is hard for me to say how much as I changed other system components while speakers were burning in. They performed decently with only some 50 hours of playing time, but reached the optimum sound in about 6 months time (2 hours listening daily).

My listening room with the way I use it with furniture set up is not ideal for listening to these speakers, still I feel I have achieved a very good sound. My listening living room is of 6.50 m x 4.35 m dimensions, having an L shape side space of 2.10 m x 1.5 m. Speakers are put along each (longer dimension) wall with the AER speaker units at 2.70 m from the back and 3.80 m from the front to the wall in front, in front of which is the listening seat. Speakers are tilted towards the center of the listening position.

The way speakers are set up optimum listening position in regard to the stereo picture is rather narrow, best for one listener only... I hope in a few years time I shall have a chance to change my listening room to an acoustically much better suited one for listening to these speakers... I don't think of changing these speakers, however – they completely satisfy me, and I have listened to a lot of speakers and owned several different ones, including electrostatics, ribbon speakers, etc. They are very revealing of other components in the system. I found out the Pass First Watt F3 amplifier which I own performs better with them than some highly acclaimed SE tube power amps, like the Yamamoto A-08S amp, which I owned and sold it.

My system consists of the following components:

• Pass First Watt F3 power amplifier
• Django+ TVC preamp (with S&B transformers),  remote control not very good, but unit detracts less from music than other preamps I tried
• Kuzma reference turntable
• Moerch DP-6 tonearm
• Audio Technica ML170 cartridge (no matter how good a moving magnet cartrige this is, will soon be changed to a better MC with S&B step-up transformer)
• Nelson Pass Pearl DIY phono preamplifier
• Two Sony DVP-9000ES SACD/CD players, one with built in Allen Wright Level 5+ modification, one for back-up
• Yamaha TX-2000 receiver
• Audiophile Pure Power supply APS 1050A
• Several audiophile interconnects and power cords, most noticeable recent interconnect acquisition being the Harmonic Technology Cyberlight P2A and Wave cables, powered by a 12V battery
• Best speaker cables tried so far are the Audience Au24 which I own two 3 m stereo sets and connect two lengths in series for the left speaker, since I need a 5 m length for the left speaker
• Two Solid Steel audio stands, model 6.4S and 5.4S